Ryan Ridgely

On November 11th, 2018, We got a sneak peak of the Dinosaur Hall in the Cincinati Museum Center at Union Terminal. It's phenomenal! The Exhibit opens later in November, 2018. We helped assemble a hands-on, interactive digital dinosaur exhibit to support the model of "open-inquiry" that the museum is using for the exhibits. Unfortunately, "mum's the word" until the exhibit officially opens!

This infographic highlights the challenges of American airmen early in the Daylight Strategic Bombing campaign in Europe during the second World War. Research of 8th Army Air Force records paints a slightly different narrative from what has become the typical story of the air war over Europe. While many B-17 heavy bombers were indeed shot down, a significant number of losses were from planes that returned from these missions, shot up enough that they had to be written off. The Memphis Belle was the first B-17 Flying Fortress to complete its tour of duty of 25 missions. After years of neglect due to lack of funding, the Memphis Belle was restored and unveiled to the public on the 75th anniversiary of acheiving this milestone, on May 19th, 2018 at the National Museum of the US Air Force.

As part of scientific outreach.... and just plain fun!.... we uploaded a 3D interactive, and annotated, model of the brain cavity, cranial nerves, vasculature, and balance/hearing organs of the big boy, Tyrannosaurus rex. Best part? You can download the 3D model for free, and print it out on any 3D printer. How cool is that? This specimen is from the American Museum of Narural History (AMNH 5117), which we had on loan almost a decade ago.

Additionally, you can learn more than you ever wanted to know about Tyrannosaurid neuroanatomy and paratympanic sinuses in the braincase from the technical paper we published nearly 10 years ago. Here's the citable, download via the button below:

Witmer, L. M. and R. C. Ridgely. 2009. New insights into the brain, braincase, and ear region of tyrannosaurs, with implications for sensory organization and behavior. Anatomical Record 292:1266–1296.

I was very fortunate to work with some heavy hitters in vertebrate paleontology on the analysis and description of the long-necked sauropod dinosaur Sarmientosaurus. Skills I bring to a project like this include the generation of 3D models of the internal anatomy. Here, we see the brain endocast, balance and hearing organs, cranial nerves, and arteries and veins. Eyes and ocular muscles were added to the skull as a point of reference.

Here's the citable, download the paper via the button below:

Martínez, R. D. F., M. C. Lamanna, F. E. Novas, R. C. Ridgely, G. A. Casal, J. Martínez, J. R. Vita, and L. M. Witmer. 2016. A basal lithostrotian titanosaur (Dinosauria: Sauropoda) with a complete skull: Implications for the evolution and paleobiology of Titanosauria. PLoS ONE 11(4): e0151661. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0151661.

This is a snippet of a larger project on aquarium maintenance. There's not that much chemistry to worry about in freshwater aquaria, so why scare people away with the little bit of chemistry that's worth knowing? A little cartooning keeps it fun, while driving home the need for water changes to flush out the nitrates.

This was a fun illustration for a commentary on a new fossil lizard. What made this one enjoyable is that it involved CT scanning a modern-day lizard, and then dressing it up to look the part using Maya, ZBrush, and Photoshop.

I work in Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. In this capacity, I’ve generated many learning and teaching aids over the years showing off human anatomy in an interactive format. Unlike many anatomical models that simply are “models”, I use CT scanning and X-ray contrast-enhancing techniques to produce 100% accurate assets. One of these assests that has proven very popular is a human skull model. The Sketchfab button below will take you to an "exploding" version of this skull which you can interact with.

It's a great privilege to work on some of the most famous beasts that ever walked the earth, namely Tyrannosaurs. It’s humbling when museums ask you to help flesh out their exhibits on these beasts. Beasts that started out very small as babies. Could we help the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, MT show what a baby Tyrannosaur (nicknamed, "Chomper") might have looked like based on some very scrappy fossil evidence?

We could try!

We took a model of another juvenile tyrannosaur, I tweaked it to match a baby Tarbosaurus that we had recently published on, and then I digitally sculpted the other parts we needed and finally, we digitally inserted the actual fossils. A 3D print of our file was done here at Ohio University's Innovation Center, which was sent off to the Museum of the Rockies where it was painted and put on display in an exhibit on Tyrannosaur growth.

Working many, many moons ago with CT data of the armoured dinosaurs known as Ankylosaurs. The CT reconstructions eventually led to some of our seminal work which showed that these animals had multiple "loops" in the nasal airway, the so-called "crazy-straw" airway. We also figured our how much a T-rex head likely weighed!

Here's the citable. Download via the button below:

Witmer, L. M., and R. C. Ridgely. 2008. The paranasal air sinuses of predatory and armored dinosaurs (Archosauria: Theropoda and Ankylosauria) and their contribution to cephalic architecture. Anatomical Record 291:1362–1388.