Data gained from the systematics, phylogeny, ecology and biogeography of extant and fossil African mammals (Neogene and Quaternary) are applied to two research foci:

1) reconstructing the temporal, environmental, and biogeographic context of human evolution using contemporaneous suids, hippopotamids, and cercopithecids;

2) understanding how morphological adaptations evolve (interplays between morphology, diet, and environmental constraints) using the case-study of iterative herbivorous adaptations in African Neogene and Quaternary Suidae.

I am an integrative evolutionary biologist interested in patterns and processes of organismal diversification, associated changes in morphological disparity, organism-environment interactions, and how diversity is structured in space and over time. African freshwater mollusks, extant and fossil, are my main model system, notably the evolutionary mollusk radiations of the East African Rift System.