Most living species of mammal are part of the group Placentalia. Their origin during the Cretaceous and diversification around the end-Cretaceous mass extinction is a fascinating subject matter with all sorts of implications for the way diversity is generated.

My PhD thesis and subsequent postdoctoral work at University College London used phylogenetic methods to establish rates of evolution and patterns of morphological diversity over this crucial period in mammal evolution.

The fossil record is incomplete, and this is widely known to affect our understanding of diversity over time. But how does it affect our ability to reconstruct phylogenies?

In my Leverhulme-funded Early Career Fellowship at the University of Birmingham, I have been addressing geographic and character treatment biases in simulated data. The results have been severely delayed by COVID, but I hope to publish them very soon.

The early proto-scientists of the 17th century and earlier are utterly fascinating. Through my research, I’ve uncovered the earliest known published description of a trace fossil by Bernard Palissy.

I am also continually interested by Danish polymath and early museum curator Ole Worm, and hope to write something about him in the near(ish) future.

Network mathematics are an intriguing way of identifying provinciality in palaeontological communities. I have used faunal similarity metrics to note the similarity between Madagascar and the south of India in the Cretaceous, and used network methods to chart India’s shift from a Gondwanan to a Laurasian biota through the Palaeogene.

As part of a project led by Nussaïbah Raja and Emma Dunne, I am investigating the etymologies of dinosaur names, with a view to addressing the colonial legacy in taxonomic nomenclature.

The project as a whole is global, and addresses many aspects of decolonisation, among other topics in the study of palaeontology as a discipline. More information is here.