Assistant Director (Collections and Research), Emeritus
Mark studies how dinosaur bones change with growth and how fossil bone is preserved.
Burning questions: "What's the difference chemically and mineralogically between an unaltered modern bone and a fossil bone? What is the effect, if any, of the burial environment on the mineral and chemical properties, and how do you measure it?"
Sidelights: Mark is also researching the behavior and life history of pachycephalosaurs (dome-headed dinosaurs) and ceratopsids (horned-dinosaurs), particularly Triceratops.
His favorite thing about research: "The field of paleontology is much more integrative now, and working with colleagues from geochemistry, biology, and medicine, makes research both fun and challenging. Probing fossils with particle beams and X-rays, or slicing thin sections only 100's of microns thick, provides a wealth of new questions and projects. Plus I enjoy traveling to new places and meeting new people!"
Selected Publications
- Horner, J.R., M.B. Goodwin, and D.C. Evans. 2023. A new pachycephalosaurid from the Hell Creek Formation, Garfield County, Montana, U.S.A. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 10.1080/02724634.2023.2190369 Read it
- Nirody, J.A., M.B. Goodwin, J.R. Horner, T.L. Huynh, M.W. Colbert, D.K. Smith, and D.C. Evans. 2022. Quantifying vascularity in the frontoparietal dome of Stegoceras validum (Dinosauria: Pachycephalosauridae) from high resolution CT scans. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Read it
- Woodruff, D.C., M.B. Goodwin, T.R. Lyson, and D.C. Evans. 2021. Ontogeny and variation of the pachycephalosaurine dinosaur Sphaerotholus buchholtzae, and its systematics within the genus. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 193:563-601. Read it
- Nesbitt, S.J., Stocker, M.R., Chatterjee, S., Horner, J.R., Goodwin, M.B. 2021. A remarkable group of thick-headed Triassic Period archosauromorphs with a wide, possibly Pangean distribution. Journal of Anatomy, 239:184-206. Read it
- Cullen, T.M., F.J. Longstaffe, U.G. Wortmann, L. Huang, F. Fanti, M.B. Goodwin, M.J. Ryan, D.C. Evans. 2020. Large-scale stable isotope characterization of a Late Cretaceous dinosaur-dominated ecosystem. Geology v. 48, https://doi.org/10.1130/G47399.1 Read it