I attended college at The University of Chicago and did my graduate work in Paleoanthropology at New York University, where I received an award for best science dissertation (1995) for the study “Function, Allometry, and Evolution of the Australopithecine Lower Precaudal Spine.” My research interests include catarrhine primate evolution, evolution of Afro-Arabian mammals (particularly proboscideans), mammalian functional morphology (particularly hominids), taphonomy, and preparation and conservation of vertebrate fossils. I consider myself a field- and specimen-based researcher, and in pursuing my research interests have traveled widely to paleontological sites and museums, mostly in the Old World (Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, Great Britain, and France). My published work includes papers on ape-cercopithecoid divergence, proboscidean taxonomy and evolution, hominoid functional morphology, early cetacean evolution and functional morphology, and taphonomic analysis of skeletal remains from eagle- and chimpanzee-kill assemblages. I recently co-edited (with Lars Werdelin) the Cenozoic Mammals of Africa (University of California Press, 2010), which received a 2010 PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers for Professional and Scholarly Excellence for a single volume scientific reference. My current research is on the oldest moerithere (Proboscidean) fossils from Birket Qarun, Egypt, the evolutionary importance of mid-Pliocene fossil elephants from eastern Africa, proboscidean diversity and paleoecology in the late Miocene Siwalik deposits of Pakistan, australopithecine sacral morphology, and evolution and positional behavior of early catarrhine primates, including Miocene apes.