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
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The retroviral insert appears to inadvertently switch off a gene involved in brain development.
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The retroviral insert appears to inadvertently switch off a gene involved in brain development.
By
Siddhant Pusdekar
27 January 2026 | 5 min read
FDA website no longer warns against bogus autism therapies, and more
Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 26 January.
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Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 26 January.
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Jill Adams
27 January 2026 | 2 min read
Why emotion research is stuck—and how to move it forward
Studying how organisms infer indirect threats and understand changing contexts can establish a common framework that bridges species and levels of analysis.
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Studying how organisms infer indirect threats and understand changing contexts can establish a common framework that bridges species and levels of analysis.
By
Joshua P. Johansen
26 January 2026 | 0 min watch