Dr. William Anyonge

Dr. Anyonge teaches General Biology II, Evolution, Human Anatomy and Physiology and Methods of Biological Research (Senior Research) for Biology Department majors.He is particularly interested in the anatomy and functional morphology of extinct saber-tooth cats. He is currently also working on the paleobiology of extinct giant wolves that inhabited North and South America over 10,000 years ago. "Hundreds of skulls and disarticulated skeletons of these carnivores have been recovered from the La Brea Tar pits in California and are housed at the Page Museum in Los Angeles. My aim is to reconstruct the locomotor and dietary habits of these large wolves that coexisted with the now extinct saber-tooth cats that roamed the Los Angeles basin in the late Pleistocene" Many questions about the life of these predators remain unanswered. " How did saber-tooth cats use their sabers to bring down prey? Did they run down their prey the same way lions hunt for food in the African Savannah? How big were they? The search for answers to these questions keep Dr. Anyonge busy visiting museums all over the world and exploring fossil deposits in distant localities such as the Turkana Region in Northern Kenya.

Expertise

Paleontology, Comparative Anatomy