People
Outside the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology in June 2023.
Back (from left):
Kirsty Mellor, Rachel Barham, Lizzy Steell, Oliver Demuth, José Antonio Palma Liberona, Pei-Chen Kuo, Charles Wolrige-Gordon, Bassel Arnaout
Middle (from left):
Grace Burton, Sophie Truepenny, Grace Kinney-Broderick, Georgina Scott, Astrid Xu, Annabel Hunt, Charlotte McConnell
Front (from left):
Albert Chen, Junya Watanabe, Guillermo Navalón, Daniel Field, Carla du Toit, Juan Benito, Olivia Plateau, Klara Widrig
our lab has representatives from around the world, with evolutionary interests ranging from morphology to phylogenetics to EMBRYOLOGY. we are united by a passion for understanding the evolutionary origins of the present-day diversity of vertebrate animals, especially birds.
Prof. Daniel J. Field
djf70[at]cam.ac.uk
Positions: Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology & Strickland Curator of Ornithology
Hometown: Calgary, Alberta, 🇨🇦
Undergraduate: University of British Columbia: Zoology
MPhil & PhD: Yale University: Geology & Geophysics
CV; Google Scholar; ResearchGate; Twitter
Daniel is Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge, and the Strickland Curator of Ornithology at the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology. He is also a research associate of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Natural History Museum (London), and a fellow of Christ's College Cambridge, where Charles Darwin studied as an undergraduate. Since 2019 he has held a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship.
Daniel uses the vertebrate fossil record to answer questions about how, where, and when Earth’s modern biodiversity arose. He is passionate about natural history and science outreach, and enjoys photographing Earth’s vertebrate biodiversity in the field.
postdoctoral researchers
Dr Olivia Plateau
ojcp2[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: Swiss Mobility Postdoc, 2023-2025
Hometown: Paris, 🇫🇷
Undergraduate: Sorbonne University (Pierre and Marie Curie Campus): Biology
Master’s: Sorbonne: Systematics, Evolution and Paleontology & Paris Cité University:
Interdisciplinary Approaches in Life Sciences
PhD: University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Favourite Activities: Travelling, Running, Winter walks in the mountains
Olivia is primarily interested in bird evolution and ontogeny, focusing on the study of avian skulls. Her main focus corresponds to the comparison of cranial bone morphology, organization and fusion between juveniles and adults of extant birds. To get better insight in the interaction between ontogeny and major evolutionary changes, she also compares extant birds with their extinct relatives.
Dr Carla du Toit
cjd92[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: Newton International Fellow, 2023-2025
Hometown: Cape Town, 🇿🇦
Undergraduate: University of Cape Town
PhD: FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, Cape Town
Favourite Activities: Birding, walking her dog, wine tasting, travelling, writing
Carla is interested in the sensory ecology of birds, particularly their sense of touch using their beaks, and how we can combine methodological approaches to determine how extant birds perceive the world around them and find food. Furthermore, she uses comparative methods to examine the morphology of the beaks of extinct birds from fossils to answer questions about their palaeoecology and the evolutionary trends of some of the earliest known crown birds. Her research will focus primarily on seabirds, waterfowl and waders, both extant and extinct.
Dr Guillermo Navalón
gn315[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: UKRI Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2021-2023
Hometown: Madrid, 🇪🇸
Undergraduate: Autonomous University of Madrid (BSc Biology)
Master's and PhD: University of Bristol (MSc and PhD)
Favourite Activities: Birdwatching, scuba diving, drawing, outdoor sports
Guillermo is interested in how evolution structures phenotypic diversity over large timescales.
In particular, he studies how intrinsic factors such as development interact with ecological factors
in macroevolution, focusing on the study of birds and their skeletal anatomy. To accomplish this, he works at several scales from macroevolutionary studies of phenotype across dozens of species to anatomical systematic research on fossils, mostly birds.
Dr Albert “Chendytes” Chen
ac2318[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: PhD Student, 2017-22
Junior Research Fellow, 2022-25
Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio, 🇺🇸
Undergraduate: University of Maryland: College Park, Geology
Master’s: University of Bristol: Palaeobiology
Favourite Activities: Reading, cartooning, birding, science communication
Albert’s primary interests lie in the function, ecology, and evolution of vertebrate animals (especially maniraptoran dinosaurs). He pursues palaeontology due to its ability to shed light on the origins of modern organisms and environments. For his PhD, he studies the anatomy and systematics of a variety of fossil birds and their close relatives.
Dr Juan “The Guan” Benito
jb2284[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: PhD Student, 2017-22
Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2022-23
Hometown: Barcelona, Catalonia, 🇪🇸
Undergraduate: Universitat de Barcelona: Biology
Master’s: Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona: Palaeontology
Favourite Activities: Craft beer, weird music, craft beer, craft beer
Juan is interested in evolution, phylogeny, and morphological disparity. For his PhD, Juan has been examining the postcranial morphology of crownward Mesozoic birds using high resolution three-dimensional data. His previous research focussed on often overlooked small vertebrates, including lepidosaurs and procolophonids.
Dr Andrzej Wolniewicz
andrzej.s.wolniewicz[at]gmail.com
Position: NAWA Bekker Fellow, 2023-2025
Hometown: Gostyn, 🇵🇱
Undergraduate and PhD: University of Oxford
Favourite activities: Travelling, music, reading, swimming
Twitter
Andrzej is a vertebrate palaeontologist who studies the origins and early evolution of reptiles, with a particular focus on understanding how the major groups of extant and extinct reptiles are related to one another. He is also interested in the evolutionary transition from a terrestrial to an aquatic lifestyle that several groups of reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs and sauropterygians, underwent in the Mesozoic. Andrzej’s research involves fieldwork, comparative anatomy, CT-scanning and phylogenetic reconstruction.
Dr Fabio Alfieri
fabio_alfieri[at]yahoo.it
Position: SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023-2025.
Hometown: Firenze, 🇮🇹
Undergraduate and master's: University of Pisa (Italy), Natural and Environmental Sciences
Master's: University of Pisa (Italy), Conservation and Evolution
PhD: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany), Zoology
Favourite activities: Travelling, watching movies, reading, listening to music, watching football
Twitter
Fabio focuses on the evolution of bone morphology in tetrapods, addressing extant and extinct taxa. He is experienced in collections-based research: i.e. digitisation of museum specimens, analysis of virtual data (especially inner bone structure) and phylogenetic comparative methods in R. Following his experience studying mammals (PhD), with a special focus on primates (Master’s and side projects), Fabio will reconstruct the evolutionary drivers of the inner structure of extant bird wing bones, applying his findings to infer the palaeobiology of extinct taxa, e.g. terror-birds.
graduate students
Thomas MacGillavry
thomas.gillavry[at]vetmeduni.ac.at
Position: Visiting PhD candidate from University of Vienna, 2024
Hometown: Antwerp, Belgium 🇧🇪
Undergraduate: University of Glasgow, Zoology
Master’s: University of Glasgow/Max Planck Institute of Ornithology (Munich)
Favourite Activities: Drums, Capoeira, birding, photography, tea ceremony, reading
Thomas is primarily interested in the evolution of animal signals, specifically avian courtship display behaviours. For his PhD, he is studying the display behaviour of Victoria’s riflebird in Far North Queensland (Australia) and is visiting the Field lab to work on phylogenetic comparative projects in the broader bird of paradise family. Thomas is also broadly interested in animal cognition and comparative approaches to studying human music and dance.
Grace Burton
mgpb3[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholarship PhD student, 2022-
MPhil Student, 2021-22
Hometown: Streatham, London, 🇬🇧
Undergraduate: Imperial College London, Biological Sciences
Favourite Activities: Piano, jigsaw puzzling, visiting museums
Grace is interested in vertebrate phylogeny and key evolutionary transitions. She is working on understanding the internal architecture of the bird skeleton, and is especially interested in deriving new anatomical insights from 3D modelling techniques. Her previous research has focused on the evolution of early jawed vertebrates, including placoderms.
Klara "The Kea" Widrig
kew66[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: Cambridge Gates Scholarship PhD student, 2020-
MPhil student, 2019-20
Hometown: Lyon Mountain, New York, 🇺🇸
Undergraduate: McGill University: Biology
Master’s: Cambridge: Earth Sciences
Favourite Activities: Running, hiking, illustration, calligraphy, visiting museums,
showing off pictures of her cat, archery
Klara is interested in major evolutionary transitions in vertebrates, particularly the evolution of flight. She is investigating the evolution of the major avian clade Palaeognathae (ratites and kin) from the perspective of the fossil record.
Bassel Arnaout
ba419[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: PhD Student, 2021-
Hometown: Damascus, 🇸🇾
Undergraduate: Brock University
Master's: Carleton University
Favourite Activities: Thinking about evolutionary theory, birding, playing the piano,
cycling, waltzing, reading.
Bassel is passionate about phenotypic evolution both at the micro and macro levels, and considers bird skulls to be a perfect bridge between these scales. To understand phenotypic evolution, he learns from embryonic development—the biological process that assembles phenotypes, and one that can resemble the evolutionary process. He is currently using his backgrounds in embryology (evo-devo), zoology, and palaeontology to understand the evolution of the skull in Galloanserae. Bassel is co-supervised by Dr Ben Steventon (Department of Genetics).
Annabel Hunt
akh56[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: PhD Student, 2022-
Hometown: Devon, UK, 🇬🇧
Undergraduate: University of Oxford, Earth Sciences (MEarthSci)
Favourite Activities: Assisting with dinosaur digs, preparing fossils, hiking, swimming, kayaking
Annabel is passionate about using micro-computed tomography to reveal novel anatomical features of fossil vertebrates and to use these observations to study morphological evolution and phylogenetic relationships. She is using her prior knowledge of the early reptilian skull, and experience segmenting bone from CT scans, to investigate the anatomy and evolution of specific aspects of the dinosaurian skull (including modern birds). Annabel is co-supervised by Prof. Steve Brusatte (University of Edinburgh).
Grace Kinney-Broderick
gracekbroderick8[at]gmail.com
Position: PhD student, 2023-
Hometown: Chicago, Illinois, 🇺🇸
Undergraduate: Boston College: Environmental Geoscience
Master’s: University of Bristol: Palaeobiology
Favourite Activities: Wildlife photography, spending time with her dog Truffle, working out,
Kpop, and dancing
Grace is passionate about both paleontology and ornithology thus culminating in a PhD focusing on the Cretaceous Pygostylian: Confuciusornis. She will be updating and adding to the previous description of this basal bird with a special focus on their hindlimb morphology. Using CT scan data and geometric morphometrics she will compare the pedal anatomy with that of extant species.
Christian Voiculescu-Holvad
cv391[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: MPhil student, 2023-24
Hometown: Oxford, 🇬🇧
Undergraduate: University College London
Favourite Activities: Fossil collecting, playing piano, watching horror films, hiking
Christian is interested in the palaeoecology and biogeography of nektonic predatory fauna from latest-Cretaceous European chalk deposits. He is affiliated as curator with the GeoCenter Møns Klint museum (Denmark). His previous research focused on the transatlantic distribution of long-snouted gavialoid crocodylians. For his MPhil, he is investigating the Danish White Chalk mosasaur assemblage, co-supervised by Prof. Alexandra Turchyn (Department of Earth Sciences).
Katrina van Grouw
kv340[at]cam.ac.uk
Position: PhD student, 2021-
Hometown: Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, 🇬🇧
Undergraduate: University of Plymouth
Master's: Royal College of Art
Favourite Activities: Writing; keeping birds; a million things to do with bird skeletons,
museums, and specimen preparation; walking on the downs with her dog; visiting pubs.
Katrina has a longstanding involvement with birds and comparative anatomy, and has written and
illustrated several outstanding books on these topics. For her PhD Katrina is interested in the mysterious extinct seabird clade Pelagornithidae, the bony-toothed birds, and hopes to shed new light on their ecology and evolutionary history.
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Georgina Scott
Position: MPhil student, 2023-24
Hometown: Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, 🇬🇧
Undergraduate: University of Cambridge, Natural Sciences (Zoology)
Favourite activities: Reading, baking, crochet, playing board games
Georgina is interested in phylogenetics and the use of fossils to understand palaeoecology and evolutionary transitions. She is using CT scan data to study the skeleton of early Anseriformes.
Armin Schmitt
Position: Cambridge Trust PhD student, 2020-
Hometown: Friedrichshafen, 🇩🇪
Undergraduate: University of Mainz: Geology & Palaeontology
Master’s: University of Bonn, Geology & Palaeontology (Diplom)
Favourite Activities: Cooking, painting, travelling, cinema
Armin is interested in genome size evolution throughout the evolutionary history of birds. He is interested in the application of high-resolution synchrotron microtomography data to palaeontology, and its potential to reveal internal bone structures which may relate to physiology. In his master’s thesis he applied 3D modelling software to segment cranial endosseous structures in sauropodomorph dinosaurs to infer habitual head and neck posture from the size and shape of the labyrinths (inner ear) of these long-necked sauropods, whose unique body plan has no analogy in today’s animal kingdom.
Undergraduate students
Wayne Liang
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2023-24
Cian Williams
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2023-24
Anyaise Green
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2023-24
Annie Worth
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2023-24
Pip Young
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2023-24
Stanley Somogyi
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2023-24
Jasper Lee
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2023-24
Alex Adderley
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2023-24
Liam Brady
Position: Earth Sciences Part III project Student, 2023-24
Lab Alumni
Dr Junya Watanabe
Positions: Newton International Fellow, 2019-2021
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellow, 2022-23
Junya's Research: Junya’s research investigated the influence of developmental factors on the evolution and
diversification of organisms. He aims to provide a framework for testing whether biases in microevolutionary variability have influenced macroevolutionary diversification patterns.
Dr Oliver Demuth
Position: PhD Student, 2020-23
Oliver's Research: Oliver is interested in functional morphology and how it relates to the locomotion of living and extinct reptiles (including birds). For his PhD he developed several new quantitative approaches to incorporate three-dimensionally preserved fossils into computational biomechanical analyses, with a focus on reconstructing the evolution of modern flapping bird flight.
Dr Pei-Chen Kuo
Position: Cambridge-Taiwan Scholarship PhD student, 2020-23
Pei-Chen's Research: For his PhD, Pei-Chen investigated the evolution of morphology in the avian feeding apparatus, employing sophisticated geometric analyses to incorporate living and fossil birds into a single evolutionary framework.
Dr Lizzy Steell
Position: PhD Student (NERC C-CLEAR DTP), 2019-23
Lizzy's Research: Lizzy's PhD addressed comparative morphology and phylogenetics of most diverse order of birds, the passerines.
Sophie Truepenny
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2022-23
Sophie's Research: Sophie investigated the morphology of the hyolingual apparatus in nectarivorous birds for her Part II project.
Rachel Barham
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2022-23
Rachel's Research: Rachel investigated the inner ear morphology of owls for her Part II project.
Astrid Xu
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2022-23
Astrid's Research: Astrid investigated quadrate morphology in owls for her Part II project.
Charlotte McConnell
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2022-23
Charlotte's Research: Charlotte illustrated and described a new fossil from the London Clay Formation for her Part II project.
Georgina Scott
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2022-23
Georgina's Research: Georgina characterised aspects of skeletal morphology in presbyornithid fossil birds for her Part II project.
Charles Wolrige Gordon
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2022-23
Charles' Research: Charles investigated ear and skull morphology in owls for his Part II project.
Kirsty Mellor
Position: Zoology Part II project Student, 2022-23
Kirsty's Research: Kirsty characterised skeletal pneumatisation in the cervical vertebrae of anseriforms for her Part II project.
José Antonio Palma Liberona
Position: Visiting PhD student, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2023
José's Research: José focused on how embryonic mechanical stimulation can drive shape skeletal morphology.
Abi Crane
Position: MPhil Student, 2021-22
Abi's Research: Abi investigated the morphology of the mandible of early-diverging bird groups with an emphasis on phylogenetic implications for the ‘wonderchicken’, Asteriornis maastrichtensis. She has moved onto a PhD at the University of Southampton.
Emily Smith
Position: Zoology Part II project student, 2021-22
Emily's Research: Emily investigated the internal architecture of avian long bones from a structural perspective.
Natalie Rose
Position: Zoology Part II project student, 2021-22
Natalie's Research: Natalie investigated patterns of ossification in the embryonic skulls of birds.
Alexandra Davies
Position: Zoology Part II project student, 2021-22
Alex's Research: Alex investigated the morphology of the tongue apparatus in sunbirds (Nectariniidae).
Joel Gayford
Position: Zoology Part II project student, 2021-22
Joe's Research: Joel investigated ontogenetic shifts in patterns of allometric growth in sharks. He moved on to a master's at Imperial College London.
Louis Fisher
Position: Zoology Part II project student, 2021-22
Louis' Research: Louis investigated comparative aspects of bone fusion in the bird skull.
Dr Neil Brocklehurst
Position: UKRI Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2021-2022
Neil's Research: Neil investigated major patterns early in bird evolutionary history, investigating support for alternative phylogenetic arrangements of deep neornithine lineages and support for alternative temporal scenarios of bird diversification.
Simon Ducatez
Position: UKRI Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2020-2022
Simon's Research: Simon investigated the evolution of life history strategies during his postdoc, and has now begun a faculty position in Tahiti(!) at the University of French Polynesia.
Matthieu Chotard
Position: Visiting Research Master’s Student, 2021
Matthieu's Research: Matthieu joined our lab for six months, studying the evolution of avian tarsus morphology while on exchange from Université de Rennes 1.
Garance Robin
Position: Visiting Research Master’s Student, 2020
Garance’s Research: Garance joined our lab for six months, studying the evolution of bird body size while on exchange from Université de Rennes 1.
Kit Baker
Position: MESc student, 2019-2020
Kit’s Research: Kit studied the morphology of Cretaceous avialans using high resolution three-dimensional visualisation techniques.
Dr Jake Berv
Position: Visiting NSF Graduate Fellow, Cornell University, 2018
Jake's Research: Jake and Daniel continue to collaborate on a number of projects related to exploring the interface between micro and macroevolution, and avian palaeontology. Jake is currently a Michigan Fellow at the University of Michigan.
Dania Kewbank
Position: Undergraduate Final-year Student, 2018
Dania’s Research: Dania studied the pelvic morphology of bird-like dinosaurs using high-resolution visualisation techniques.
Jake Callaghan
Position: Undergraduate Final-year Student, 2017
Jake’s Research: Jake dove into the world of Bayesian phylogenetics to investigate the higher-order interrelationships of living birds and their survival patterns across the K-Pg boundary.
Georgina Halford
Position: Undergraduate Final-year Student, 2017
Georgina’s Research: Georgina examined the evolution of the avian hindlimb by working with high-resolution three-dimensional scans of Mesozoic avialan legs.
Jono Gooch
Position: Undergraduate Final-year Student, 2017
Jono’s Research: Jono studied the anatomy of early amniotes to gain a clearer understanding of how vertebrates originally became specialised for life on dry land.
Joe Hardy
Position: Undergraduate Final-year Student, 2017
Joe’s Research: Joe’s work was focused on the anatomy of the wings of Mesozoic Avialae.
