Acknowledgments
We thank Amanda Hurford and Heather Myers of the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) for their guidance throughout the process of developing this text and promotion of the book. Many thanks also to Sue Wiegand (Saint Mary’s College) for encouraging us to apply for the PALNI grant that enabled this project, serving as a liaison between our writing team and PALNI, and the many, many questions she helped us answer along the way.
We especially thank our illustrative team: Amy Cheu (senior illustrator), Kerry Stricker, and Allison Buck. Anatomy is an exceptionally visual field of study, and many of the figures in this book would not have been possible without their tremendous efforts. Thanks also to the contributing authors who poured their time, energy, and expertise into the chapters herein. This text has been a labor of love for many of these individuals, and we are grateful for their contributions.
This project was made possible by the generous support of PALSave: PALNI Affordable Learning, the Gans Foundation, and the Saint Mary’s College Center for Women’s Intercultural Leadership. We would also like to acknowledge the many funding agencies that have supported comparative vertebrate anatomy research through the years, some of which is highlighted in this book, and contributed to our ever-expanding understanding of vertebrate animal and human bodies. Special thanks goes to Saint Mary’s College, Allegheny College, Cornell University, and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Division of Vertebrate Morphology for supporting us in this endeavor.
We would like to thank Natalia Taft and Andie Ward for serving as reviewers for this text. Their valuable feedback has improved the clarity and quality of this book for faculty and student users.
Finally, we are grateful to our friends and families for their unwavering support of the project. From indulging our excitement when we learned something new and cool that we just had to share, to cheering us to the finish line, you were with us every step of the way. “Thank you” isn’t enough, but we know you know.
