Larisa DeSantis
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Vanderbilt University
- Nashville TN
Studies mammal teeth and bones to determine how they responded to ancient climate change and reasons why they went extinct.
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Biography
DeSantis is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award which is the most prestigious award in support of “early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.” When DeSantis is not in the laboratory, field, or classroom, she is involved in scientific and public outreach in her local community and as the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Distinguished Lecturer for North America. She enjoys engaging in science outreach as part of her courses and in conjunction with local science and/or historical centers, schools, movie theaters, and even breweries, and hopes to help change the face of science via these outreach events and other mentoring activities.
DeSantis has published more than 50 papers and book chapters, and her work has been featured on National Geographic Wild, the Discovery Channel, numerous radio shows, and has received global news coverage. DeSantis dreams big to answer questions of broad relevance to society. It is therefore no coincidence that her research lab is also named the DeSantis DREAM Lab—which stands for Dietary Reconstructions and Ecological Assessments of Mammals.
Areas of Expertise
Education
University of Florida
Ph.D.
2009
Yale University
M.E.M.
2003
University of California
B.S.
2000
Selected Media Appearances
Five Shocking Animal Hybrids That Truly Exist in Nature, From Narlugas to Grolar Bears to Coywolves
Smithsonian Magazine online
2024-03-21
“Apex predators help stabilize ecosystems, and looking forward, I really hope the Arctic still has a polar bear,” Larisa DeSantis, a paleontologist at Vanderbilt University, told Live Science’s Ben Turner in 2021. “But, with that all being said, could the pizzly allow for bears to continue to exist in intermediate regions of the Arctic? Possibly, yes. That’s why we need to continue to study them.”
Dogged by climate change and human hunters, a mammoth’s life is written in her tusks
Science Magazine online
2024-01-17
“The idea that humans would have been aware of and influenced by mammoth behavior … makes complete sense,” says Larisa Grawe DeSantis, a paleontologist at Vanderbilt University. Existing Dené dialects may reflect that ancient awareness, says study co-author Gerad Smith, an anthropologist at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Several preserve a word, negutih and variations thereof, that roughly translates to “a creature carrying a singular object in front of its face”— perhaps a mammoth and its trunk.
Saber-Tooth Cats and Dire Wolves Carried a Terrible Disease in Their Bones
The New York Times
2023-07-12
Just from bones, it’s unclear why OCD struck the way it did. Nor can the researchers say for sure how it affected the animals’ quality of life or mobility. In modern domestic animals, the disease can cause varying levels of pain and lameness. In early life, these bone defects can heal on their own; it may not have been much of an impairment, at least for some individuals. The animals’ social behavior also may have mitigated the worst of the disease, said Larisa DeSantis, a paleontologist at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the study.
Polar bears are inbreeding because climate change is rapidly melting their habitat - sparking fears that their offspring could become infertile
Daily Mail online
2021-09-09
Paleontologist Larisa DeSantis told DailyMail.com that polar bears are retreating inland to find food, since sea ice is melting, and are mating with grizzly bears that travel up to Alaska.
Saber-toothed cats stalked and ate baby mammoths
CNN online
2021-04-28
"Essentially you are what you eat," study coauthor and paleontologist Larisa DeSantis, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, told CNN. "In the case of carnivores, we can tell if they were eating things that ate Carbon-4 (warm season) grasses or were they eating things that ate Carbon-3 (cool season) shrubs."
Baby Mammoths Were Meals for These Saber-Tooth Cats
New York Times online
2021-04-27
“Everything that we looked at basically told us that Smilodon and Homotherium are totally different cats,” said Larisa DeSantis, the paper’s lead author and a paleontologist at Vanderbilt University. She adds that although they were more closely related to each other than to any cat species living today, “They were able to coexist in these ecosystems likely due to having very different dietary niches.”
Meet the 'pizzly bear': Critically endangered polar bears are mating with grizzly bears in Alaska and creating a hybrid animal that is more resilient to climate change
Daily Mail online
2021-04-13
Paleontologist Larisa DeSantis told DailyMail.com that polar bears are retreating inland to find food, since sea ice is melting, and are mating with grizzly bears that travel up to Alaska.
The Real Dire Wolf Ran Into an Evolutionary Dead End
The New York Times online
2021-01-13
Larisa DeSantis, a paleontologist at Vanderbilt University, who was not involved in the research, said it “is consistent with the idea of a North American origin of dire wolves.”
The Dire Wolf Might Have Prowled Asia, Fossil Suggests
The New York Times online
2020-10-15
It would be “exceptionally interesting” if dire wolves really had migrated into Asia, said Larisa R. G. DeSantis, a vertebrate paleontologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who was not involved in the research. But this is just one specimen, she cautioned, and it is notoriously difficult to differentiate species of canines based on the shapes of their bones and teeth alone.
Fossils in La Brea Tar Pits reveal why coyotes still exist, but not saber-toothed cats
CNN online
2019-08-05
Vanderbilt University paleontologist Larisa DeSantis grew up visiting the fossil site in Hancock Park. Over the last decade, DeSantis used a dentistry approach to study the teeth of now-extinct predators like saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and American lions. She applied the same approach to the teeth recovered from the pits that belonged to ancient ancestors of gray wolves, coyotes and cougars.
Hyenas Once Stalked The Arctic, Fossils Reveal
National Geographic online
2019-06-23
Researchers have long assumed hyenas must have passed into North America via the Bering land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, when sea levels were lower, but this is the first hard evidence that hyenas could survive well enough in Arctic environments to make that journey.
“It’s really fun and exciting to see that hyenas were in fact in the Arctic and that they did take this migration route,” says Larisa DeSantis, an expert on fossil carnivores at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the research. “It confirms what people had long thought … that these hyenas had come through Beringia and the land bridge to make it into more southern regions of North America.”
Selected Articles
A year in the life of a giant ground sloth during the Last Glacial Maximum in Belize
Science AdvancesJean T Larmon, H Gregory McDonald, Stanley Ambrose, Larisa RG DeSantis, Lisa J Lucero
2019
Stable isotope analysis of the first fossilized Eremotherium laurillardi remains from Belize offers valuable insights into the conditions within which this individual lived and its ability to adapt to the increasing aridity of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Cathodoluminescence (CL) microscopy was used to identify chemical alteration of the tooth during fossilization.
Dental microwear textures across cheek teeth in canids: Implications for dietary studies of extant and extinct canids
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, PalaeoecologyBrian P Tanis, Larisa RG DeSantis, Rebecca C Terry
2018
Dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) has been instrumental in reconstructing dietary ecology of extinct and extant carnivorans. Current sampling methods for canids focus on lower second molars (m2), where the grinding of flesh and bone captures dental microwear indicative of diet.
The phylogenetic signal in tooth wear: What does it mean?
Ecology and EvolutionLarisa DeSantis, Mikael Fortelius, Frederick E Grine, Christine Janis, Thomas M Kaiser, Gildas Merceron, Mark A Purnell, Ellen Schulz‐Kornas, Juha Saarinen, Mark Teaford, Peter S Ungar, Indrė Žliobaitė
2018
A new study by Fraser et al (2018) urges the use of phylogenetic comparative methods, whenever possible, in analyses of mammalian tooth wear. We are concerned about this for two reasons. First, this recommendation may mislead the research community into thinking that phylogenetic signal is an artifact of some sort rather than a fundamental outcome of the evolutionary process.
