Rate My Professor Sophie White

Sophie White holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Otago. She currently serves as Paleontology Lab Manager and Paleontology Collections Manager in the Department of Geology, which is part of the Division of Sciences at the University of Otago. Her responsibilities include fossil preparation, curation and conservation of paleontological collections, and management of the Geology Museum. She is also designated as Paleontology Preparator with direct dial +64 3 471 4575 and has been identified as an Assistant Research Fellow in university news and research contexts. Working in the paleo prep lab, she prepares fossil specimens critical to the department's research program. Additionally, she collaborates across disciplines, including with the Sir John Walsh Research Institute in the Faculty of Dentistry.

Sophie White has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications in paleontology, anatomy, and dental histology. Key works include "Tooth wear and dental calculus in a group of orca (Orcinus orca)" (2025, Journal of Zoology), where she contributed to retrieving and processing skeletal remains; "Longitudinal changes in juvenile and adolescent body mass index using dental histology" (2023, American Journal of Biological Anthropology); "An inconstant biorhythm: The changing pace of Retzius periodicity in modern humans" (2023); "Dental biorhythm is associated with adolescent weight gain" (2022, Communications Medicine), for which she assisted in the New Zealand section by collecting shed baby teeth and monthly weight, height, and lower leg length measurements from 125 children across 19 Dunedin schools; and "Enamel daily secretion rates of deciduous molars from a southern Brazilian population" (2021, Archives of Oral Biology). She provided data curation for "The hourglass dolphin (Cephalorhynchus cruciger)" (2025). Her expertise in specimen preparation is acknowledged in Department of Geology outputs, including "Morphology and Systematics of the Fossil Penguin Platydyptes novaezealandiae" (2022) and "Relationships and functional morphology of three new fossil penguins from the Miocene of New Zealand" (2021). Through these contributions, she supports research on vertebrate paleontology, marine mammal anatomy, and human developmental biology.