People

Below is a list of our current Staff, Postdoctoral Researchers and Research Fellows and Honorary Research Fellows. You can also find details of our previous PhD students and recent members of the Bristol Palaeobiology Group.

Staff

• Professor Michael Benton OBE, FRS FRSE: Origin of dinosaurs; mass extinctions; macroevolution
• Dr Tim Caro: Evolution of coloration in mammals, decapods and anemones; conservation strategies in tropical ecosystems
• Dr John Cunningham: Senior Teaching Associate, Palaeobiology MSc Tutor
• Professor Philip Donoghue FRS: Origins of animals, plants, vertebrates, molecular palaeobiology
• Dr Erica Hendy: Past climates from corals and caves
• Dr Michael Henehan: The global carbon cycle
• Professor Christine Janis: Diversification of mammals in the Cretaceous and Palaeogene (Emeritus Professor)
• Dr Stuart Kearns: Geochemistry and imaging of exceptionally preserved fossils
• Dr Antonio Ballell Mayoral: Laboratories Manager.
• Dr Jordi Paps Montserrat: Animal and plant genome evolution, molecular phylogenetics
• Professor Davide Pisani: Arthropod phylogenomics, origins of vision, supertrees
• Professor Emily Rayfield: Functional morphology and evolutionary biomechanics
• Professor Daniela Schmidt: Climate change impacts on marine ecosystems
• Dr Jakob Vinther: Molecular palaeobiology; Cambrian explosion
• Dr Tom Williams: Origin of eukaryotes (Royal Society University Research Fellow)

Postdoctoral Researchers and Research Fellows

• Dr Sandra Alvarez-Carretero: Contingency and purpose in the evolution of biospheres (Templeton Foundation)

• Dr Antonio Ballel Mayoral: Morphological and functional diversity of the lepidosaur head (BBSRC PDRA)
• Dr Alexander Bowles: ice Dependent Adaptations for Plant Terrestrialization (Leverhulme Trust)
• Dr David Button: Macroevolution of birds (ERC Innovation PDRA)
• Dr Ben Griffin: An integrated quantitative approach to characterising organismal design-space and tests of evolutionary causality (Templeton Foundation)
• Dr Christopher Kay: Contingency and purpose in the evolution of biospheres (Templeton Foundation)
• Dr Joseph Keating: Macroevolutionary modelling (ERC Innovation PDRA)
• Dr Xiumei Lu: Evolutionary dynamics of Neuropterida and the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution (Royal Society K. C. Wong International Fellow)
• Dr Melisa Morales Garcia: Origin and evolution of mammals (NERC)
• Dr Anna Nenarokova: Resolving the prokaryote-to-eukaryote transition using new phylogenomic models of endosymbiosis (Moore Foundation)
• Dr Allana Queiroz de Azevedo: Expertise in benthic and planktonic foraminifera from Miocene and Quaternary focused in paleoceanography and paleoclimate changes.
• Dr Carlos Rivera Rivera: Evolution of gene regulatory networks in Metazoa (EU Marie Curie Research Fellow)
• Dr Romain Sabroux: Fossil sea spider and chelicerate evolution (EU Marie Curie Research Fellow)
• Dr Catherine Sheard: Macroevolution of mammals (ERC Innovation PDRA)
• Dr Tom Stubbs: Macroevolution of tetrapod disparity (ERC Innovation PDRA)
• Dr Yan Zhao: The evolution of Mesozoic mammals (Chinese Scholarship Council)
• Dr Zhicai Zhu: Sedimentiology across the Permian-Triassic boundary (CSFC Research Fellow)

Current Postgraduate Research Students

• Isaura Aguilar Pedrayes (Supervisors: Emily Rayfield & Michael Benton)
  Project title: Tooth complexity and feeding efficiency: Tracing the evolution of ornithischian dinosaurs
• Felix Bowers (Supervisors: Emily Rayfield & Chrissy Hammond)
  Project title: Joint function throughout the life course
• Sidney Davies (Supervisors: Phil Donoghue & Davide Pisani)
  Project title: Telling evolutionary time – establishing the relative efficacy of molecular clock methods
• Gengyu Fang (Supervisors: Michael Benton & Philip Donoghue)
  Project title: The Evolution of Fish on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau
• Thomas Farrell (Supervisor: Jakob Vinther)
  Project title: A can of worms—tracing the origins of Ecdysozoa using fossils, molecules and morphology in a Bayesian framework
• Wenqian Feng (Supervisor: Emily Rayfield)
  Project title: Body size and evolutionary adaptation of conical reef-building sponges in the Early Paleozoic
• Hady George (Supervisor: Emily Rayfield & Hugo Dutel)
  Project title: How do vertebrate jaws work in living and extinct animals?
• Zhiqing Guo (Supervisor: Philip Donoghue)
  Project title: Exploration of the dynamic evolutionary rates of early animals
• Zhiyi Li (Supervisors: Daniela Schmidt & Gemma Coxton)
  Project title: Impact of climate change on coastal ecosystem engineers
• Qiling Liu (Supervisor: Mike Benton)
  Project title: Macroevolution and Function of Triassic Sauropterygia
• James Rawson (Supervisors: Emily Rayfield)
  Project title: Evolution, development and function of the mammalian middle ear
• Ruolin Wu (Supervisors: Philip Donoghue & Davide Pisani)
  Project title: Constraining topological and temporal uncertainty in evolutionary history
  
• Kirsten Flett (Supervisors: Philip Donoghue & Davide Pisani) 
  Project title: Fossil insights into the developmental evolution of animal bodyplans
• YanDa Li (Supervisors: Philip Donoghue & Davide Pisani)
  Project title: Evolution of morphological disparity in beetles
• Xinyuan Meng (Supervisors: Philip Donoghue & Davide Pisani)
  Project title: Evolutionary assembly of the gnathostome bodyplan
• Benton Walters (Supervisors: Philip Donoghue & Emily Rayfield)
  Project title: Evolutionary morphology of animals wings

• Ruby Barrett (Supervisors: Daniela Schmidt & Paul Valdes)
  Project title: The role of marine plankton in the Earth’s chemistry

• Damiano Landi (Supervisors: Mike Benton & Emily Rayfield)
  Project title: On the re-emergence of beaks (Self)

• Yuming Liu (Supervisors: Philip Donoghue & Emily Rayfield)
  Project title: Origin of flight in insects

Honorary Research Fellows

• Dr Marta Álvarez-Presas: Comparative genomics of parasitic animals
• Dr Natasha Bakhurina: pterosaurs from Russia and Asia
• Dr Massimo Bernardi: Permian-Triassic tetrapods and ichnofossils (Trento)
• Dr Heather Birch: (NERC)
• Dr Arnau Bolet: macroevolution of Mesozoic lepidosaurs (Postdoc, Institut Cayalyà de OPaleontologia, Barcelona, Spain)
• Professor Derek Briggs FRS: Experimental taphonomy; evolutionary significance of exceptionally preserved fossils; Burgess Shale (Director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University)
• Dr Kenneth De Baets: Ammonoids and marine palaeoecology (Visiting Fellow)
• Dr Hugo Dutel: Form, function and development of the amniote skull: a case study using lepidosaurs
• Dr Armin Elsler: Early tetrapod evolution: Red Queen or Court Jester? 
• Dr Humberto Ferron: Early vertebrate evolution 
• Dr Pam Gill: Kuehneotherium and the relationships of Mesozoic mammals (Research Associate)
• Professor Liang Lü: Associate Professor, Hebei Normal University, nematode evolution
• Professor Susan Marriott: Clastic sedimentology
• Dr Carlos Martinez Perez: Conodont phylogeny and function (Lecturer, University of Valencia)
• Dr Maria McNamara: Colour in the feathers of fossil birds and dinosaurs (Lecturer, University of Cork)
• Dr Benjamin Moon: Marine reptiles of the Strawberry Bank site of exceptional preservation
• Dr Duncan Murdock: Shedding synchrotron light on the fossil record of early plant evolution (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Oxford)
• Dr Elis Newham: Origin and evolution of mammals
• Professor Chris Paul: Fossil echinoderms; quality of fossil record (Research Fellow). Contact
• Dr Colin Palmer: pterosaur flight biomechanics
• Dr Judyth Sassoon: Mesozoic marine reptiles (Research Associate)
• Ms Weichen Sun: Early animal evolution, Chinese Scholarship Council (Visiting researcher)
• Dr Mike Taylor: Sauropod dinosaur anatomy and function (Research Associate)
• Dr Danna Titelboim: (EU MSC Research Fellow, University of Oxford)
• Professor Maurice Tucker: Carbonate sedimentology and ancient environments
• Dr Karina Vanadzina: Evolution of morphological disparity in planktic foraminifers in 3D (University of Warsaw)
• Dr David Whiteside: Triassic-Jurassic fissures and their faunas (Research Associate)
• Dr Mark Wilkinson: Phylogenetic method; caecilian evolution (Natural History Museum)
• Dr Jamie Wilson: Projecting uncertainties in the marine biological pump (University of Liverpool)
• Dr William A. Wimbledon: Jurassic-Cretaceous biostratigraphy; ammonites
• Dr James Witts: Focus on marine systems, impact of global change on ecosystems and macroevolution, mass extinctions