Kiersten Formoso
Appointment Details
- Priority area: Advancing STEM Diversity
- Disciplines: Vertebrate Paleobiology, Evolutionary Biology, Functional Morphology
- Mentors: Dr. Julie Lockwood and Dr. Lena Struwe
- Mentors' Disciplines: Wildlife Conservation; Invasive Species (Dr. Lockwood) | Plant Biology; Evolution (Dr. Struwe)
- School: School of Environmental and Biological Sciences
- Department: Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources
About Kiersten Formoso
Kiersten Formoso is a vertebrate paleobiologist who completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California. There, she studied the biomechanical and functional morphological controls of evolution into aquatic environments. Studying animals like whales, seals, and sea lions, as well as extinct marine reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs, like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, she asked if the way these animals' land ancestors locomoted on land impacted how they evolved to swim. For her Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship, she is taking a similar approach and instead asking whether or not certain aspects of an animal's terrestrial morphology and biomechanics may prevent aquatic specialization in the case of animals like dinosaurs.
Kiersten is also working on understanding the biomechanics and kinematics of mosasaur swimming, and her work in this area was featured in seasons 1 and 2 of Apple TV+'s and BBC's Prehistoric Planet. Kiersten is additionally a research associate at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, where she will be involved in summer fieldwork in the southwest United States, digging up Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous fossils, and she travels to museums all over the world to collect her fossil data.