Stephanie Drumheller

Stephanie Drumheller is an American paleontologist who specializes in taphonomy and fossil bite marks. Her research heavily focuses on crocodilian feeding behavior and finding evidence of ancient scavenging on dinosaur bones.

Bite marks on fossils provide direct physical evidence of predator-prey interactions and scavenging behaviors in ancient ecosystems. Drumheller analyzes these traces, often left by crocodilians, to reconstruct how prehistoric animals died and decayed.

Taphonomy is the study of how organisms decay and become fossilized over time, which is a primary focus of Drumheller's work. It helps paleontologists understand the biological and environmental processes that affect a body from the moment of death until its discovery.

While Drumheller is a paleontologist, her primary scientific contribution comes from analyzing existing fossils to understand feeding traces and decay. Her published research focuses more on the behavior of ancient crocodilians and the decay processes of dinosaurs rather than naming new species.