Andy Grass received a bachelor of science from U.C. Davis, majoring in geology and minoring in Japanese, with a focus on paleontology. He then attended the University of Iowa and completed his master’s thesis in 2009 on the evolution of crania shape in ungulate mammals through time as grazing behavior became more widespread; and his Ph.D. dissertation in 2014 on the evolution of the sloth shoulder, including differences between modern tree sloths and extinct giant ground sloths. Both of these projects utilized a methodology called geometric morphometrics, which analyzes the shape of objects while mathematically removing other variables such as size.
In 2015, Grass joined the faculty at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, W.V., as a post-doctoral research instructor teaching gross anatomy. While there, he started a project looking at the evolutionary implications of certain upper-limb muscle variations in humans. At New York Tech, he is continuing his research into the evolution of sloth morphology, as well as potentially beginning an excavation project of a series of caves in Alabama that have yielded sloth and other fossils in the past.
Recent Projects/Research
- Evolution of sloth upper limb and shoulder morphology
- Morphology changes through ontogeny in sloths
- Evolution of crania shape in ungulate mammals related to browsing and grazing behaviors
- Evolutionary implications of the chondroepitrochlearis variant muscle in humans
Courses Taught at New York Tech
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Gross Anatomy