Palaeontology staff directory

Research interests

I joined the Museum in 1974 as an assistant in the Anthropology section. In 1990, this became part of the present Vertebrates & Anthropology Division.

My primary  area of responsibility is for the anthropological collections. These are diverse and range from fossilised remains of primates to a hominid collection which includes original crania from human ancestors that lived some 100,000 years ago. The changing nature of human technology is represented within the artefact collection with pebble tools dating back to almost two million years ago and  with the most recent being microliths made during the final phases of the last Ice Age (ca. 10,000 y.BP).  Present-day human diversity is represented by a globally representative sample of human skeletal remains which is heavily biased towards remains from  archaeological sites in Britain (e.g. the 1000 human remains from 1st century A.D. Roman camp near Poundbury in Dorset). The databasing of such series constitutes one of my major ongoing projects.

I work closely with others in Vertebrates & Anthropology and assist visiting  researchers to the collections who typically come from a wide range of disciplines (e.g., palaeoanthropology, archaeology, dentistry and human growth studies).

Current activities

I am currently involved in a long term research project, now in its final phase, that involves the databasing with a computer programme of cranial data representing present-day human skull variation. When this is completed it is likely to have considerable forensic application.