Research Interests

I conduct my research at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts in the U.S.A. but also have extensive collaborations with colleagues from Africa, Austria, China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South America, Spain, Sweden, UK and many other parts of the U.S.

I focus on using dental toothwear as a mechanism for assessing dietary traits in herbivorous ungulates and other mammals in order to study global trends in vegetation and climate and extinction patterns through significant climatic events and over vast periods of time. In this capacity, I co-developed the low magnification stereomicrowear technique with Nikos Solounias—a novel method of examining microscopic scars on dental enamel caused by food substances. This methodology (i.e., low-magnification stereomicrowear analysis) uses a standard light stereoscope at 35 times magnification and a fiber optic light source to examine tooth enamel surfaces (Semprebon, 2004; Solounias and Semprebon 2002).

I also contributed to improving the resolution and repeatability of gross tooth wear methodologies (i.e., mesowear analyses) by co-developing "the mesowear ruler" with Matthew Mihlbachler and Nikos Solounias from NYIT (Old Wesbury, NY USA) and Florent Rivals (Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social -IPHES - in Tarragona, Spain). [See Mihlbachler et al., 2012 for more details]