Michael J. Benton is 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 New Scientist.
He is the author of several palaeontology text books (e.g. Vertebrate Palaeontology) and children's books. He has also advised on many media productions including BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs.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.
Sahney, S., Benton, M.J. and Paul Ferry 2010. "Links between global taxonomic diversity, ecological diversity and the expansion of vertebrates on land." Biology Letters.
Benton, J. 2009. "The Red Queen and the Court Jester: species diversity and the role of biotic and abiotic factors through time." Science 323, 728-732.
Lloyd, G. T., Davis, K. E., Pisani, D., Tarver, J. E., Ruta, M., Sakamoto, M., Hone, D. W. E., Jennings, R., and *Benton, M. J. 2008. "Dinosaurs and the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution." Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B 275, 2483-2490.
Sahney, S. and Benton, M.J., 2008. "Recovery from the most profound mass extinction of all time". Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B 275, 759-765.v
Benton, M. J. and Emerson, B. C. 2007. "How did life become so diverse? The dynamics of diversification according to the fossil record and molecular phylogenetics". Palaeontology 50: 23-40.
Benton, m.J. and Donoghue, P.C.J. 2007. "Palaeontological evidence to date the tree of life". Molecular Biology and Evolution 24, 26-53.