Shaena Montanari was a reporter for The Transmitter from 2023 to 2025. She was previously an investigative health reporter at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting in Phoenix. Prior to becoming a journalist, Shaena worked as a paleontologist.
Shaena Montanari
Former reporter
The Transmitter
From this contributor
Neuropeptides reprogram social roles in leafcutter ants
By
Shaena Montanari
11 July 2025 | 6 min read
Nature retracts paper on novel brain cell type against authors’ wishes
By
Shaena Montanari
9 July 2025 | 4 min read
Authors correct image errors in Neuron paper that challenged microglia-to-neuron conversion
By
Shaena Montanari
26 June 2025 | 3 min read
Releasing the Hydra with Rafael Yuste
By
Brady Huggett, Shaena Montanari
4 April 2025 | 10 min read
Plaque levels differ in popular Alzheimer’s mouse model depending on which parent’s variants are passed down
By
Shaena Montanari
4 February 2025 | 0 min watch
Education
- M.A. in investigative journalism, Arizona State University
- Ph.D. in comparative biology, Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History
- B.S. in geological sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Fellowships
- AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship
- AAAS Mass Media Fellowship
- Royal Society Newton International Fellowship
Articles
- “Cracking the egg: the use of modern and fossil eggs for ecological, environmental and biological interpretation” | Royal Society Open Science
- “Pliocene paleoenvironments of southeastern Queensland, Australia inferred from stable isotopes of marsupial tooth enamel” | PLOS ONE
- “Dinosaur eggshell and tooth enamel geochemistry as an indicator of Mongolian Late Cretaceous paleoenvironments” | Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
Explore more from The Transmitter
Textbook model of hippocampus’s role in memory may need updating
The CA3 region, long thought to have just one circuit, has two, sporting different wiring and functions, a new preprint suggests.
Textbook model of hippocampus’s role in memory may need updating
The CA3 region, long thought to have just one circuit, has two, sporting different wiring and functions, a new preprint suggests.
By
Alissa de Chassey
4 August 2026 | 5 min read
Using antisense oligos to plumb rare genetic conditions, and more
Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 3 August.
Using antisense oligos to plumb rare genetic conditions, and more
Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 3 August.
By
Jill Adams
4 August 2026 | 2 min read
Este artigo mudou minha vida: adotando um dos primeiros modelos de neurociência naturalística
Um artigo publicado na PNAS em 1992 mostrou que o canto das aves aumenta a expressão de um gene de resposta imediata no prosencéfalo dessas aves. O estudo revelou a Ribeiro a importância de investigar as respostas moleculares em contextos naturalísticos.
Este artigo mudou minha vida: adotando um dos primeiros modelos de neurociência naturalística
Um artigo publicado na PNAS em 1992 mostrou que o canto das aves aumenta a expressão de um gene de resposta imediata no prosencéfalo dessas aves. O estudo revelou a Ribeiro a importância de investigar as respostas moleculares em contextos naturalísticos.
By
Sidarta Ribeiro
3 August 2026 | 5 min read