Emily J. Rayfield
Department of Earth Sciences
Wills Memorial Building
University of Bristol
Bristol, BS8 1RJ
United Kingdom

Emily Rayfield received her undergraduate degree (B.A., Biological Sciences) from the University of Oxford, and her Ph.D from the University of Cambridge. She joined the University of Bristol in 2005. Her research focuses on how skeletal mechanics influences morphological evolution and the relationship between form and function in hard tissues - primarily, but not exclusively, the vertebrate skull. She is interested in how finite element analysis can inform on functional behaviour in individual taxa and elucidate functional ecology and morphological changes across evolutionary transitions such as the origin of birds and mammals. Such studies are constrained by research on FE-validation in birds, testing how accurately our FE-models approach reality.