Michael J. Benton

Who is Michael J. Benton?

Michael J. Benton FRS is a British paleontologist, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and professor of vertebrate palaeontology in the Department 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. His work appears in a variety of journals, including New Scientist.

He is the author of several palaeontology text books 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 as the deal with the mysteries of the Permian extinction. In December 2010, Benton got a rhynchosaur named Bentonyx in his honour.