Research : comparative anatomy, systematics, locomotion, ontogeny, and osteohistology of reptiles with a particular interest in early branching sauropodomorphs.

Dr Kimi Chapelle is a South African vertebrate palaeobiologist whose research programme seeks to understand the development, growth, and adaptation of the vertebrate skeleton and the sensory structures it houses.

Using a multidisciplinary toolkit comprising micro-computed tomography scanning, osteohistology, multivariate statistics, along with functional and comparative anatomy, Dr Kimi Chapelle explores how dinosaurs, and their close relatives grew, moved, and evolved. She also studies comparative living model systems using this toolkit to better understand the fossil record.

One of her main academic focal areas is early branching sauropodomorph dinosaurs. Sauropodomorphs include the largest terrestrial vertebrates to have ever evolved. During 165 million years of sauropodomorph evolution, the group underwent noteworthy macroevolutionary changes in body mass, locomotion, and diet. Early sauropodomorphs were surprisingly unaffected by the end-Triassic extinction, remaining the dominant large-bodied terrestrial herbivores during an interval where ~76% of Earth’s terrestrial and marine species disappeared forever. Several factors may have played a role in sauropodomorphs’ ability to thrive in post-extinction environments, including faster incubation periods, developmental plasticity, eggshell structure, and rapid growth rates. This makes the clade an ideal and essential study system for investigating ontogeny, the relationships between ecology and morphology, diversity, and biostratigraphic distribution.

Dr Kimi Chapelle has a passion for fieldwork and has participated in various expeditions around the world including in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and the USA. Her current fieldwork focuses on the Mesozoic of southern Africa, exploring poorly known parts of the Triassic and Jurassic fossil record. These research goals comprise describing unpublished specimens and taxa, exploring their growth strategies, and investigating their macroevolutionary patterns and trends.