RESEARCH

“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity – I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly.” Following this quote of Plato (in The Republic), I am looking for ‘simplicity’ – to explain complex phenomena in the fossil record.

Key topics

1. Paleontology
2. Macroevolution and mass extinctions
3. Evolutionary developmental biology
4. Paleoecology

Taxonomic scopes

  • Archosaurs (dinosaurs, crocodylians, ancestry Triassic forms, etc.)
  • Mesozoic marine reptiles
  • Paleozoic and Mesozoic fishes
  • Paleozoic plants
  • Domestic dogs (and other close relatives)

Selected project themes

  • Late Cretaceous marine vertebrates from northern Gulf of Mexico
  • Evolution and paleoecology of Devonian trees
  • Evolution and biomechanics of archosaur vertebrae