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Erika R. Goldsmith is a Visiting Instructor of Biology at Fort Lewis College and a vertebrate paleontologist whose work uses the fossil record and natural history collections to explore how reptiles, both extinct and living, have adapted to their environments through ontogeny/development and evolution.
Her passion for paleontology began in childhood, when she and her family joined the Delaware Valley Paleontological Society (DVPS) and traveled across the northeastern United States to collect fossils. She went on to earn a B.S. in Geology with a minor in Biology from CUNY–Queens College, followed by an M.S. in Geology from Temple University. At Temple, she investigated vertebrate paleontology at the micro- and nano-scale by analyzing the osteohistology and geochemistry of paleo-Arctic centrosaurine ceratopsid (Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum) rib fragments.
Erika conducted her doctoral research at Virginia Tech, where she examined the interplay between ontogeny and evolution to better understand how convergent morphologies arise in long-snouted reptiles, specifically extinct phytosaurs and modern crocodylians. Her research integrates advanced techniques such as X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanning, osteohistology, geometric morphometrics, quantitative methods in ecology and evolution (using the R statistical environment), and comparative phylogenetic approaches.
Broadly, Erika’s research aims not only to clarify phytosaur ontogeny, taxonomy, and phylogenetic relationships, but also to advance a larger goal: understanding how environmental and ecological factors shape the morphological development and evolution of reptiles.