Dr. Tsai is a comparative anatomist and paleontologist at the Biomedical Sciences Department at Missouri State University. His research focus on the evolution and development of limb joints in animals, with a particular interest in archosaurs: Birds, crocodiles, and their extinct relatives like dinosaurs.  

In summer 2019, he attended the 12th International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology at Prague, Czech Republic, where he presented his lab’s research on alligator locomotion – how they used their thick joint cartilage to support their bodies while walking on land. He later visited the paleontological collection at the Polish Museum of Evolution (ZPAL), where he investigated 210 million year old fossils of early crocodilian and dinosaur relatives, in order to understand how they walked, grew, and evolved over time.  

As a comparative anatomist, Dr. Tsai seeks to understand the mechanism that allow different groups of animals to build their joints in different ways, and how these knowledge can allow us to approach the structure and function of human joint development, function, and growth from new perspectives.