My Research

My research is focused on using fossils of dinosaurs, birds, and reptiles to understand major evolutionary transitions. I’m interested in the origins of new kinds of organisms, including the origins of birds from dinosaurs, and the evolution of snakes from lizards. And I’m interested in major changes in the structure of the biosphere brought about by major geological events, particularly the Chicxulub asteroid impact and the end-Cretaceous mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.

The research I do combines classic natural history and more modern approaches- original observation and synthesis. I start by looking at fossils- in museums, in the field- noticing stuff, then asking questions. Often simple questions like how a fossil is put together, how many species there are, and what they’re related to. While I'm interested in data synthesis and new statistical and phylogenetic tools, I feel that new ideas and novel hypotheses don't come from simulations, metaanalyses or databases, they come from new observations of Nature itself. In this sense, it's an old-school, unapologetically Victorian approach to doing science. I think doing great science- of the sort that Humboldt, Darwin, Wallace, and Wegener did- requires a curiosity about nature and perhaps a certain sense of wanderlust.

Starting with observation has led to some unexpected discoveries- the presence of wings on the hind limbs of the ancient bird Archaeopteryx. The discovery of skull bones from Coniophis, the most primitive known snake. The existence of new dinosaurs, such as the little insectivore Albertonykus borealis, the ceratopsians Titanoceratops ouranos and Mojoceratops perifania. Finding little claws like the one shown above led to the discovery of Hesperonychus elizabethae, a tiny dromaeosaur (my drawing of the animal is shown below).

A lot of this has resulted from more or less serendipitous observation, led more by curiosity than any particular plan. I think my research will always have this exploratory quality, but increasingly I've learned to be more targeted- to make observations focusing on periods and fossils of particular interest.

This has led to my recent project looking at museum collections to better understand the K-T extinction. The most recent discovery is the recognition of a mass extinction of birds at the end of the Cretaceous. By exploring museum collections for new bird bones (below) it was possible to demonstrate the birds suffered a major mass extinction that coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years go.

If you asked me how I came to this point, I couldn’t really tell you. I grew up on a remote Alaskan island famed for its bears. As a kid, I was interested in nature- I flipped over the rocks in the tidepools to find crabs, octopi, and starfish, along with more obscure things like brachiopods, echiuran worms, and armored sea cucumbers. I collected insects, carnivorous plants, and the bones of birds from the beaches and sea-cliffs. I was interested in evolution and read a lot of Gould, Diamond, and Darwin. Maybe because I grew up on an island, I was always fascinated by faraway places, by escape… and you can’t get more faraway and escapist than deep time.

These days, I’m trying to finish up some Cretaceous-Tertiary work. I think the importance of the K-T in driving the evolution of the biosphere has been vastly underestimated. But I’m increasingly interested in studying other major changes to the biosphere brought on by changes to the physical environment.These days I’m particularly interested in major climactic events in the Paleogene – including the Paleocene-Eocene transition and the onset of glaciation at the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary – and in looking at the effects of Cenomanian-Turonian warming on terrestrial ecosystems.

I'm not entirely sure where this is all leading, but then, if you know exactly where you're going, it's not really discovery.

UPDATE- I have recently moved to the University of Bath in England, and am setting up a lab. I'm looking for students who are interested in answering cool evolutionary problems involving mass extinction, adaptive radiation, and global change, by combining fossils, phylogenies, and morphometrics. Currently playing around with some new tools (at least for me) including supertrees, stratocladistics, and DNA.