Hi Reddit, my name is Siobhán Cooke, and I’m an anatomy professor and paleontologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. My research (mostly) focuses on two things: 1) The evolution and eventual extinction of the native mammals of the Caribbean region including monkeys, giant sloths, rodents, and tiny (and not so tiny) shrews. Recently, my colleagues and I published a paper demonstrating that humans likely played a role in the extinction of many of these animals just 6000 years ago. (http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110316-022754). 2) Teeth and jaws! Often all paleontologists find in the fossil record are teeth, and so we use a variety of modeling methods to get as much information out of them as possible. Some of this information is even applicable to understanding how our own teeth and jaws function. I also spend much of my time during the late summer and early fall teaching human anatomy to our medical students. Ever wonder what it is like to try to recover fossils from caves? Why do paleontologists care about teeth so much? And what does any of this have to do with teaching a gross anatomy to medical students? I look forward to having you Ask Me Anything on December 11th, 1 PM ET.