Current position: Professor

Current affiliation: Hunter College, CUNY

Research website: Link

Research description: My dissertation research focused on African papionin phylogeny and biogeography during the Plio-Pleistocene and its relationship to hominin biogeography during this time period. With generous funding from the Wenner-Gren foundation, I continue to work on the evolutionary history of these monkeys (and cercopithecoids more broadly), and along with my colleague Steve Frost (University of Oregon), we are editing a volume on African Plio-Pleistocene cercopithecoid evolution and its relationship to hominin biochronology. More broadly, I am interested in primate evolution during the past 66 million years with research projects spanning from the Eocene to the present. Since 2010, I have been conducting paleontological fieldwork in the Neogene deposits of the Siwalik Hills, India, along with my colleagues Biren Patel (University of Southern California), Rajeev Patnaik (Panjab University), and Chris Campisano (Arizona State University). This project has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Leakey Foundation. In addition, in collaboration with Ross Secord (University of Nebraska), Stephen Chester (Brooklyn College, CUNY), and Amy Chew (Brown University), I am also working on early primate/mammalian evolution and its response to the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum in the Wind River and Big Horn Basins, Wyoming. This project is also funded through the National Science Foundation. Finally, I am also involved in ongoing research on other aspects of primate and catarrhine evolution (guenon systematics and phylogeny, hominoid/early catarrhine evolution in the African and Asian Miocene, primate cranial diversity, etc.). Please visit my lab website for more details.