Ph.D. The Ohio State University
B.S. University of Minnesota - Minneapolis

Dr. Anessa DeMers started at NSU in 2025. She is originally from Minnesota and got her undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota before moving to Ohio for graduate school. Her research background is in paleontology and her Ph.D. work at The Ohio State University involved studying how mammal teeth and diets change over time. Her primary teaching responsibilities are in Anatomy and Physiology serving NSU’s growing pre-healthcare community, and she is also a co-director of the NSU Regional Science Fair.

Research Interests

Dr. DeMers studies the relationship between form and function in mammalian teeth and how this relationship has changed over evolutionary time. She specializes in the 3D digital analysis of teeth and bones. Her current work explores how the shape and number of tooth roots impacts the function of the rest of the tooth by comparing the tooth roots of living and extinct mammals.

Courses Taught

• Anatomy and Physiology I and II
• General Biology Lab
• Vertebrate Zoology
• Birds and Mammals

Selected Publications and Presentations

DeMers, A., and J. Hunter. 2024. Dental complexity and diet in amniotes: A meta-analysis. Plos one 19.2: e0292358.

DeMers, A., and J. Hunter. 2023. Getting back to our roots: what tooth root number can tell us about the ecology and phylogeny of fossil mammals. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting.

DeMers, A., and J. Hunter. 2022. Meta-analysis of orientation patch count rotated (OPCR) and dietary inference in terrestrial amniotes. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting.

DeMers, A., and J. Hunter. 2021. Inferring archaic ungulate diets using two-dimensional dentary morphology. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting.

DeMers, A., and J. Hunter. 2019. Compatibility of the patterning cascade model of tooth development with periptychid “condylarth” molar diversity. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting.