Hacking the past: How to resurrect the dead with computational models

Understanding how animals interact with the environment is a common theme in ecology, but how does one study those interactions in animals that have been extinct for millions of years? Fossils provide important clues about life in the past, and computational methods have revolutionized our ability to interpret those clues. With computational models, morphological data from fossils can be used to quantitatively reconstruct their functional performance and explore how environmental features have influenced animal behavior and evolution through deep time. This talk will highlight how computer modeling can breathe life back into fossils and promote ecological understanding of extinct species.