Zach Throckmorton

I am an anatomical sciences professor with over a decade of experience teaching gross anatomy (in the classroom and laboratory), neuroanatomy, embryology, and histology to medical students. I teach primarily in the Colorado University School of Medicine's branch campus at Colorado State University, and also teach some of undergraduate-level neuroanatomy in BMS 345. My guiding teaching philosophy is that "students do not care what you know until they know you care," because I am grateful to the professors who cared about me when I was a student. My research program entails application of quantitative anatomical variation data derived from living human populations to the human fossil record to better understand how our ancestors and our closer relatives (i.e., the apes) evolved in terms of both form and function. I am also interested in how similar anatomic form, function, and embryology across mammals can lead to similar, clinically-relevant dysfunction, and enjoy sharing these insights gained from the OneHealth approach with my students. My research highlights include being a member of the international teams that described the extinct species Homo naledi and the oldest known case of cancer in the human fossil record, both of which made international headlines.