Residence England Role Palaeontologist Name Michael Benton | Nationality British | |
 | ||
Alma mater University of AberdeenNewcastle University (PhD) Thesis The Triassic reptile Hyperodapedon from Elgin, functional morphology and relationships (1981) Doctoral students Graeme LloydDavid PisaniManabu SakamotoSarda Sahney Fields Paleobiology, Paleontology People also search for Stephen L. Brusatte, David Harper, Roger Osborne, Lynne Gibbs Books Vertebrate Palaeontology, When Life Nearly Died, Basic Palaeontology, The History of Life: A Very Shor, Studies in the spectator | ||
The importance to study fossils and chatting with professor michael benton
Michael James "Mike" Benton FRS (born 8 April 1956) is a British palaeontologist, and professor of vertebrate palaeontology in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. His published work has mostly concentrated on the evolution of Triassic reptiles but he has also worked on extinction events and faunal changes in the fossil record.
Contents
- The importance to study fossils and chatting with professor michael benton
- Mass extinctions and the future of life on earth michael benton tedxthessaloniki
- Education
- Research
- Awards and honours
- Publications
- References
Mass extinctions and the future of life on earth michael benton tedxthessaloniki
Education
Benton was educated at the University of Aberdeen and Newcastle University where he was awarded a PhD in 1981.
Research
Benton's research investigates palaeobiology, palaeontology, and macroevolution. Benton is the author of several palaeontology text books (e.g. Vertebrate Palaeontology) and children's books. He has also advised on many media productions including BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs and was a program consultant for Paleoworld on Discovery Science. His research interests include: diversification of life, quality of the fossil record, shapes of phylogenies, age-clade congruence, mass extinctions, Triassic ecosystem evolution, basal diapsid phylogeny, basal archosaurs, and the origin of the dinosaurs.
Benton has also been contributing in some documentaries. One of these was BBCs 2002 program The Day The Earth Nearly Died, which feature scientists and deals with the mysteries of the Permian extinction. In December 2010, Benton got a rhynchosaur named Bentonyx in his honour. His work appears in a variety of journals.
Awards and honours
Benton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014. His nomination reads:
Michael Benton has made fundamental contributions to understanding the history of life, particularly biodiversity fluctuations through time. He has led in integrating data from living and fossil organisms to generate phylogenies – solutions to the question of how major groups originated and diversified through time. This approach has revolutionised our understanding of major questions, including the relative roles of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on the history of life, whether diversity reaches saturation, the significance of mass extinctions, and how major clades radiate. His research themes: a) diversification of life; b) phylogeny of diapsids and dinosaurs; c) dating the tree of life.