Dr Stephen Pates
College Research Associate
Dr Stephen Pates research focuses on the evolution of early animals, specifically arthropods, in the aftermath of the Cambrian explosion over half a billion years ago. He combines statistical, engineering, and biological methods to understand and quantify the form, function, and diversity of past life.
His research project as a Herchel Smith Postdoctoral Fellow, aims to quantify the morphology and hydrodynamics of extinct animals. Through comparison with modern analogues, he seeks to evaluate possible examples of evolutionary convergence, and to better understand how environmental controls may have shaped the evolution of animals in deep time.
- Cambrian explosion
- Computational fluid dynamics
- Evolution of arthropods
- Fossil Lagerstatten
- Functional morphology
College Research Associate representative on the Homerton College Research Committee.
Dr Stephen Pate leads supervisions on palaeontology and palaeobiology, as well as sedimentology and earth processes, for undergraduate students at Cambridge (since January 2021). Previously he has taught supervisions, practical demonstrations and field courses on Biology and Earth Sciences courses at Cambridge, Harvard, Lausanne and Oxford universities.
He is a preprint moderator for Paleorxiv.
Three most recent publications (October 2021)
Pates S., Daley A. C., Legg D. A. & Rahman I. A. (2021) Vertically migrating Isoxys and the early Cambrian biological pump. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288: 20210464
Pates S., Lerosey-Aubril R., Daley A. C., Kier C., Bonino E., Ortega-Hernández J. (2021). The diverse radiodont fauna from the Marjum Formation of Utah, USA (Cambrian: Drumian) PeerJ 9: e10509
Jiao, D.-G., Pates, S., Lerosey-Aubril, R., Ortega-Hernández, J., Yang, J., Lan, T., and Zhang, X.-G. 2021. The endemic radiodionts of the Cambrian Stage 4 Guanshan Biota of South China. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 66 (2): 255–274.
Full list of publications available through:
