Research focus

I am a macroevolutionary palaeobiologist. I am fascinated by how and why both taxonomic and ecomorphological diversity are so unevenly distributed across the tree of life. Why do some clades comprise just a few ecomorphologically similar species, while others are made up of thousands of species with disparate ecologies and morphologies spread across all corners of the globe? Why do some clades or ecomorphological traits pass through extinction events relatively unscathed, while others are decimated to extinction? What biotic and abiotic factors drive these patterns to ultimately shape the biodiversity we see throughout geological history and today? To date, I have worked primarily on the evolution of mammals through time, using mostly fossil but also extant datasets of taxonomic occurrence and ecomorphological trait data. Mammals evolved over 200 million years ago, carving out niches alongside the dinosaurs for much of their evolutionary history. Mammals survived the mass extinction that killed all non-avian dinosaurs, and underwent a major adaptive radiation, becoming arguably the most important tetrapod group in Cenozoic land vertebrate ecosystems. For this reason, the Cenozoic is often referred to as the ‘Age of Mammals’. Throughout their evolutionary history, perturbations in the macroevolutionary patterns of mammals have been significantly linked to changes in Earth’s climate and environment. Through my work I aim to both quantify these long-term patterns of mammal evolution, as well as better understand what drives these patters. To do this, I use a suite of statistical methods in conjunction with large datasets, and take an interdisciplinary approach in order to understand patterns and drivers of macroevolution holistically, exploring interactions between the Geosphere and the Biosphere.

My publications before iDiv

Benevento, G.L., R. B. J. Benson and M. Friedman (2019) Patterns of mammalian jawecomorphological disparity duringthe Mesozoic/Cenozoic transition. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 286: 20190347. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2019.0347

Brocklehurst, N. and G. L. Benevento (2020) Dental Characters Show Higher Rates of Evolution in Mammals, but Not Reduced Independence. PeerJ 8, e8744. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.8744.

Brocklehurst, N., E. Panciroli, G. L. Benevento and R.B.J Benson (2021) Mammaliaform extinctions as a driver of the Cenozoic mammal radiation. Current Biology 31, 2955-2963. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.04.044.

Benevento, G.L., R. B. J. Benson, R. Close and R. J. Butler (2023) Early Cenozoic increases in mammal diversity cannot be explained solely by the dinosaur incumbency hypothesis. Palaeontology 66, e12653. DOI: 10.1111/pala.12653.

Other publication types

Benevento, G.L. (2025) Mammalian evolution: Digging for lower extinction rates. Current Biology 35(8), pp. R295-R297.