Irene Smail, Ph.D.

"Irene Smail"

Irene Smail, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Anatomy
Biomedical Sciences

Office Number: A-332
Phone: 304-793-6598
Lab: B-307

Education and Training

Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Anatomy – University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine

Ph.D., Anthropology, Arizona State University

Thesis: Environmental Correlates of Community Structure in Living and Fossil Cercopithecid Primates

M.A., Anthropology, Arizona State University

B.A., Classics & Classical Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Research Interests

  • Cercopithecid dental morphology & community ecology. My primary research examines the evolution of African and Asian monkey communities in the context of environmental change. I study the relationship between teeth (form) and diet (function) in modern monkeys to reconstruct the ecologies of fossil species, and examine variation in modern and fossil communities living in different habitats and experiencing different climate conditions.
  • Hominin paleoenvironments & Afar paleontology. My research on monkeys also ties in with my collaborative research that examines mammal communities more broadly as a means of understanding the conditions in which our human lineage evolved. As part of this, I am active in paleontological fieldwork on the Ledi-Geraru Research Project.

Example Publications

  • ORCID: Irene Smail (0000-0003-3300-7228) - ORCID
  • Smail, I.E., A.L. Rector, J.R. Robinson, K.E. Reed. Pliocene climatic change and the origins of Homo at Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia. 2025. Annals of Human Biology.
  • Rowan, J.R., A. Du, E. Lundgren, J.T. Faith, L. Beaudrot, C.J. Campisano, I.A. Lazagabaster, E.M. Locke, I.E. Smail, K.E. Reed, J.M. Kamilar. Long-term biotic homogenization in the East African Rift System over the last 6 million years of hominin evolution. 2024. Nature Ecology & Evolution.
  • Edmonds, H.E., E.S. Daly, I.E. Smail. Zygomatic arch root position in relation to dietary type in haplorrhine primates. 2023. The Anatomical Record.
  • Smail, I.E. Community niches and evolution of generalist primates: A preliminary assessment of Plio-Pleistocene Cercopithecidae in Africa. 2023. PaleoAnthropology.
  • Rowan, J., L. Beaudrot, J. Franklin, K.E. Reed, I.E. Smail, A. Zamora, J. Kamilar. Geographically divergent evolutionary and ecological legacies shape mammal biodiversity in the global tropics and subtropics. 2020. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.