The Anatomical Record Returns to the Sea: Exploring the Great Whales and Their Interesting Relatives

From specialized skin to sensing whiskers to unique depth perception mechanisms to novel eyes and much, much more: The distinctive ways marine mammals interact with their world are explored in a Special Issue of the The Anatomical Record

“…Thanks to Joy's ever enthusiastic collecting (and JL's ability to explain to the deans that any odors were not related to his center) a large sample of many cetaceans, including (rather difficult to house) mysticetes, were housed. This extraordinary conference resulted in a Thematic Papers Issue entitled “Mysticete anatomy and evolution,” Guest Edited by our ever‐energetic Joy Reidenberg (Laitman & Albertine, 2019; Reidenberg, 2019). Notable among some of the insights in this issue were observations on features of how marine mammal lungs respond to underwater blast dynamics (Fetherston et al, 2019); detailed comparative study of the semiaquatic moose nasal complex and how this sheds light on the evolution of ancestral cetaceans (Marquez et al, 2019); and a comparison of the nostrils in the hippopotamus and mysticetes as a means to understand both their function and evolutionary relationships (Maust‐Mohl et al, 2019).…”

Blind snakes slink, wriggle, and bump through the pages of The Anatomical Record in a novel Special Issue

“…For example, one of JL's most accomplished graduate students, Joy Reidenberg, now a leading expert on all things whale (and who is always trying to push poor JL into the seas to get close to her friends) was an undergraduate disciple of Evans. Indeed, for her graduate school application, she sent an 8 x 10 photo of herself standing next to a half-dissected cow from Evans' dissection course (it worked; she was chosen immediately, funded, and subsequently has swum off into numerous publications in The Anatomical Record, for example, Reidenberg, 2007;Reidenberg & Laitman, 2008;Damien et al, 2019; see also Laitman & Albertine, 2019). Evans was a "Renaissance" anatomist and taught about, and published on, many species, occasionally in our journal (e.g., Evans, 1959;Watson, De Lahunta, & Evans, 1986).…”