doctoral_advisor work_institution birth_place nationality doctoral_students field residence prizes article_title name alma_mater
david b. norman university of bristol northallerton british uk stephanie jen bright pierce , sandra jasinoski , mark young , palaeontology england england hodson of the geological society of london fund of the palaeontological association , lyell fund emily rayfield
 emily rayfield cambridge university
emily rayfield

emily rayfield is a british palaeontologist , who is a reader in palaeobiology in the school of earth sciences at the university of bristol .
her research primarily focuses on the functional anatomy of extinct vertebrates , especially dinosaurs , using computational methods such as finite element analysis -lrb- fea -rrb- .
in the landmark paper rayfield `` et al. '' -lrb- 2001 -rrb- , the skull of the theropod dinosaur `` allosaurus '' was analysed using fea in order to quantitatively assess different feeding hyoptheses .
this paper was the first use of fea on a three-dimensional structure in palaeontology -lrb- in collaboration with ct scanning -rrb- , and spurred the current trend of ct-scanned skull fea on feeding biomechanics in zoology and palaeontology .
in addition , she helped elucidate the cranial biomechanics of the noted carnivorous dinosaur `` tyrannosaurus '' using two-dimensional fea .
this study was expanded upon in a comparative finite element analysis of 2d theropod skulls -lrb- namely `` allosaurus '' `` coelophysis '' and `` tyrannosaurus '' -rrb- , in order to quantitately compare cranial biomechanics .
