His research focuses on understanding how limbs, acting as structures, are stressed during locomotor modes, and understanding the functional signals that locomotor activities leave in limb anatomy. Identifying the selective advantages of bipedalism for an arboreal ape-like human ancestor is a central topic in paleoanthropology. Identifying changes in limb structure during hominin evolution offers an opportunity to resolve whether the shift towards terrestrial bipedalism happened relatively quickly or more gradually, and whether fore- and hind limbs reveal similar or different evolutionary histories.
Functional morphology, primate locomotion, primate ecomorphology, paleoanthropology, comparative anatomy, virtual paleoanthropology
- Examination of morphological variability in extant and fossil ape limb anatomy
- Investigating ecomorphology and habitat complexity in chimpanzee communities
- Experimental analyses of primate gait kinetics and kinematics
- Studying form-function relationships in vertebrate limb anatomy using mouse models
- Participation in the Malapa paleoanthropological project, a new hominin-bearing fossil locality in South Africa.
