About

Sabine Stanley is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University, affiliated with the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the Space Exploration Sector of the Applied Physics Lab. She also serves as the Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education at Johns Hopkins University. Professor Stanley leads the Magnetism & Planetary Interiors (MagPI) research group, focusing on planetary magnetic fields, dynamo theory, and the interiors and evolution of planets. Her research integrates concepts from planetary physics, nonlinear physics, fluid dynamics, geophysics, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), and scientific computing. She is dedicated to working with bright, enthusiastic, and self-motivated students and postdoctoral researchers with backgrounds in physics, planetary physics, astrophysics, geophysics, mathematics, or engineering science. Additionally, Professor Stanley is committed to promoting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in academia and science, ensuring that all members of her group are respected and valued for their identities and experiences.

Research topics

• Social Science
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Epistemology
• Art
• Biology
• Law
• Aesthetics
• Genetics
• Oceanography
• Geology
• Paleontology
• Psychology
• Evolutionary biology
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Why the punctuational model of evolution is valid

  Paleobiology · 2025-11-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract I have devised two tests that pit punctuationalism against gradualism. The first is the Test of Adaptive Radiation, which I apply to families of middle Eocene Mammalia and Late Cretaceous Bivalvia. This test shows that species in both of these classes lasted much too long for evolution within them (phyletic evolution) to have produced the new families that arose during brief time intervals. This test would yield similar results for many other taxa. It supports the punctuational model, as does the Test of Living Fossils, which predicts that long, slender clades, having experienced little speciation, should have undergone little evolution. Limited largely to phyletic evolution, this is exactly what happened to them. Several multivariate morphological studies of numerous fossil lineages have found little or no gradual evolution to have been the norm. One of these included 153 lineage traits and another, 250. Still another produced a rectangular stratophenetic phylogeny, with inferred horizontal speciation events connecting vertical lineages. Taken together these studies provide overwhelming support for the punctuational model. Many studies have shown that rapid speciation events occur frequently and some are punctuational. Jellyfishes that have appeared recently in saltwater lakes on the Pacific island of Palau are remarkable examples of punctuational speciation, and so is the sudden appearance of the novel sand dollar family Dendrasteridae in the California Miocene. The punctuational model shows that the value of sexual reproduction must be in producing long-lived adaptive radiations, whereas clones die out quickly.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• SIGNIFICANT PHYLETIC EVOLUTION IS VERY RARE: EVOLUTION HAS BEEN PREDOMINANTLY PUNCTUATIONAL

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Evolutionary biology
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• JPA volume 95 issue 4 Cover and Back matter

  Journal of Paleontology · 2021-06-10

  paratextOpen access

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• JPA volume 95 issue 6 Cover and Back matter

  Journal of Paleontology · 2021-10-27

  paratextOpen access

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• JPA volume 95 issue 3 Cover and Back matter

  Journal of Paleontology · 2021-04-19

  paratextOpen access

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• JPA volume 95 issue 5 Cover and Back matter

  Journal of Paleontology · 2021-08-09

  paratextOpen access

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• JPA volume 95 issue 2 Cover and Back matter

  Journal of Paleontology · 2021-03-01

  paratextOpen access

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Making something out of nothing: Breaching everyday life by standing still in a public place

  The Sociological Review · 2020 · 12 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Social Science
  • Sociology

  Public displays of stillness and silence are increasingly found in contemporary life, yet have seldom been examined as social phenomena in their own right. We analyse people’s accomplishment, treatment and negotiation of an encounter with people ‘doing nothing’ – a breaching experiment comprising a group of students standing still in a city centre – and provide a granular description of the bodily practices whereby passers-by make ‘something’ out of ‘nothing’. Our ethnomethodological analysis of video recordings of the event demonstrates three practices for doing embodied noticing - looking back; slowing and pausing; stopping still - and illustrates how passers-by engage in ‘audiencing’ and ‘performing’. We propose breaching experiments as creative research and teaching interventions and discuss the socio-cultural, pedagogic and political implications of our analysis for studies of participation in public settings, especially where stillness, silence and ‘nothing’ feature.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evidence that more than a third of Paleozoic articulate brachiopod genera (Strophomenata) lived infaunally

  Paleobiology · 2020 · 12 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Geology
  • Paleontology
  • Oceanography

  Abstract The Strophomenata, which includes two large orders, the Strophomenida and Productida, is the largest group of Paleozoic brachiopods. Nearly all uncemented strophomenatans possessed an unusual concave brachial valve. Most of these have been considered to have lived epifaunally, but had they rested on the seafloor, not only would they have faced intense predation, but their physical instability would have been fatal. I conclude that nearly all strophomenatans, like similar concavo-convex pectinid bivalves, lived infaunally by ejecting water to create a pit into which they descended, to be protected by sediment covering the concave valve. Strophomenatans have been discovered with this sediment preserved in place. If exhumed and turned upside down, a strophomenatan could have righted itself by squirting water. Many productides had anchoring spines, and some had hinge areas with stabilizing flanges. Small spines on the brachial valves of some productides served to trap disguising sediment. Evolutionary loss of hinge teeth within both the Strophomenida and Productida reduced the friction of valve clapping. Partly because of their slender shape, strophomenides were typically more vulnerable to exhumation than productides. Strophomenides also ejected water less effectively than productides and would have been less adept at righting themselves. The virtual disappearance of the strophomenides during the Devonian can be attributed to their vulnerability to intensifying benthic bulldozing and predation. The success of the productides during the late Paleozoic can be attributed to their relatively deep sequestration in the sediment and ability to right themselves and reburrow effectively when exhumed and overturned.

  PublisherDOI

• BARRIER-ISLAND-LAGOON COMPLEXES AND MARINE TRANSGRESSIONS: AL FISHER’S BARNEGAT BAY STORY AND THE CONTRASTING HISTORY OF THE PLIOCENE PINECREST FORMATION OF FLORIDA

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Experiments and Observations Based on the Finding that Scleractinian Corals Secrete Calcite Instead of Aragonite in Cretaceous Seawater

  NSF · $26k · 2006–2008

Frequent coauthors

• Ellen Compton-Gooding

  Institute of Paleobiology

  911 shared

• Patricia H. Kelley

  911 shared

• Donald R. Prothero

  911 shared

• Michael R. Sandy

  University of Dayton

  911 shared

• Daniel B. Blake

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  886 shared

• Carl W. Stock

  University of Alabama

  810 shared

• R. D. Hoare

  774 shared

• Mary L. Droser

  University of California, Riverside

  752 shared

Labs

• Sabine Stanley GroupPI

Education

• Ph.D., Geology

  Yale University

  1968