Current Group Members
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Leonard-Pingel Lab Group, Spring 2024. Front row, from left: Aubree Steinmetz, Trinity Shirk, Dr. Jill Leonard-Pingel, Miranda Manross. Back row, from left: Connor Hopps, Oliver McLellan, Carmi Milagros Thompson, Megan O’Quin.
Principal Investigator
Jill S. Leonard-Pingel
Jill is an Assistant Professor in the School of Earth Sciences, Assistant Director of the Orton Geological Museum, and affiliated faculty in the Sustainability Institute at Ohio State. Jill is a paleobiologist/paleoecologist whose work focuses on how biological communities respond to environmental perturbations; she is especially interested in exploring how traditionally paleontological/geological tools can be applied to conservation and management questions. Jill has performed research throughout Central America and the Caribbean as well as along the southern California coastline. Although Jill’s main research focus has been on marine systems, she has recently begun research into lacustrine systems and how understanding of marine systems and how tools from marine research can be used in lacustrine core research, including analyses of taphonomy (preservation of shells) as well as a knowledge of molluscan systematics. She received her PhD from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD and her M.S. from Louisiana State University.
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Graduate Students
Oliver McLellan
Oliver is a Ph.D. candidate whose dissertation research involves paleoenvironmental reconstructions of Ohio’s inland lakes based on modern and historical (pre-industrial) diatom assemblages. These reconstructions will be used to better understand how the lakes have been altered by agricultural runoff, and to determine the extent to which polluted lakes can reasonably be restored. They conducted their Master’s research (“Late Middle to Late Miocene Paleoceanography at Rockall Plateau Site 982″) in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University, and Bachelor’s research (“Skeletons Reanimated: Avian Validation of Tyrannosaur Pose Reconstruction”) in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and received their B.S. from the Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences at Brown University. Oliver is also a parent/servant to a tabby cat named Zara, pictured on the right playing Final Fantasy XIV.
Megan O’Quin
Megan is a Master’s student whose research focuses on the use of marine invertebrate sub-fossil assemblages in reconstructing ecosystem health and structure of Caribbean coral reef ecosystems prior to large-scale global monitoring. Part of this work was the subject of their undergraduate thesis (Changes in Belize’s coral reef bivalve assemblages over time contradicts what is seen in Panama), which was also done in this lab. While this work is focused on the Caribbean, Megan is also interested in the wider application of conservation paleobiology and working with communities, grassroots organizations, etc. to apply research to threatened ecosystems. Additionally, Megan is subject to the whims of a tortoiseshell calico cat named Gilly, who likes sitting on people’s shoulders pretending to be a parrot.
Carmi Milagros Thompson
Carmi is a Ph.D. candidate whose dissertation work sits at the intersection of invertebrate paleoecology, natural history museum collections, and earth science education. Prior to arriving at Ohio State, Carmi obtained a Master’s from the University of Florida / Florida Museum of Natural History (Thesis: Paleoecology of the Florida Shell and Fill Quarry) and a Bachelor’s in Geology from the College of William and Mary (Thesis: Survey of molluscan fauna from the mid-Atlantic United States continental shelf). Carmi has experience working for the Delaware Geological Survey, the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH, DC), the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH), the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural (Santo Domingo), and the National Science Foundation. In addition to Carmi’s scholarship, Carmi is passionate about broadening representation in natural history and has served on institutional and national (Geological Society of America, Paleontological Society) committees to develop policy and programming. Carmi is also responsible for the care and keeping of a mischievous white and grey cat with no-tail named “Mocho” and can often be found writing poetry by the river.
Connor Hopps
Bio/Photo Incoming!!!
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Past Group Members
Undergraduate Researchers
Miranda Manross
Miranda graduated from Ohio State in the spring of 2024. Her undergraduate research consisted of analyzing sub-fossil invertebrate assemblages from a reef matrix core in Belize. She is now a masters student at Florida Atlantic University studying the burrowing habits of the Atlantic Long Armed Octopus. Miranda loves the ocean and all things sharks! Shark pupping grounds and habits pertaining to shark birth are a few of her passions for future research. When she is not scuba diving or collecting seashells, she is laughing at her funky cat, Stella, who is always the center of attention!
Trinity Shirk
Thesis: The Use of Diatoms as a Proxy for Environmental Variation in Ohio’s Inland Lakes
Aubree Steinmetz