Tonya Penkrot

Tonya Penkrot grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and earned her B. S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Pittsburgh.  She was inspired by her contacts and mentors both at the University of Pittsburgh and at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to pursue a career in vertebrate paleontology, and she went on to earn her Ph. D. in Functional Anatomy and Evolution from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  Her specialty is fossil mammals of Paleocene-Eocene age (specifically, 65-53 millions years old), and she enjoys discussing evolution, fossils, and especially, the diversity of mammals, living and extinct.  Dr. Penkrot loves field work where she can camp in the badlands and look for mammal fossils, and has spent almost every summer for the past 20 years doing exactly that!  She has been teaching human anatomy and physiology on the Arizona State University Downtown Phoenix campus since 2009, and BIO 182: General Biology II since 2017.  Dr. Penkrot has been a member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology since 1999, and is also a member of the American Association of Anatomists, the American Society of Mammalogists, and the National Association of Biology Teachers.

Dr. Penkrot firmly believes that learning should be a lifelong process, and she is currently learning the flute, piano and guitar, and the martial art of aikido.