James Napoli
Research Instructor
Education
PhD, Richard Gilder Graduate School, 2022
MS, Stony Brook University, 2018
BSc, Brown University, 2017
Email
james.napoli@stonybrook.edu
Links
Research: intraspecific variation, ontogeny, systematics, taxonomy, and comparative anatomy of reptiles with a focus on crocodylians and theropod dinosaurs
Dr. James Napoli is a vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionary biologist who studies vertebrate evolution through the lens of intraspecific trait variation. Natural selection acts on variation within species, and it is from these pools of variation that all branches of the tree of life, and the traits that define them, ultimately derive. Dr. Napoli's research program focuses on variation within species, and its various sources, as a window into the mechanisms underlying the great transformations in vertebrate evolution.
Dr. Napoli's research spans the fossil record and the modern day, using the rich data available for extant species to contextualize their extinct ancestors. He makes extensive use of cutting-edge approaches including micro-computed and synchrotron tomography, 3D surface scanning, multivariate Bayesian statistics, and traditional approaches in comparative anatomy.
One of Dr. Napoli's most important areas of research is solving the longstanding "ontogeny problem" in vertebrate paleontology. Growth doesn't just mean getting bigger - it involves body-wide changes to proportions and shapes of the entire skeleton, meaning that the anatomical differences between adults and babies of one species may be more significant than the differences between adults of two different species. This has posed a difficult challenge for vertebrate paleontologists for centuries. Dr. Napoli has pioneered the use of large CT datasets for extant species to determine which kinds of traits are not affected by ontogenetic (growth-related) variation, and the development of new Bayesian statistical approaches to identifying fossil specimens based upon data from living species. These works in progress have already shown significant potential to rewrite much of what we thought we knew about dinosaur growth and species richness.
Current groups of focus for Dr. Napoli include pennaraptoran dinosaurs (birds and their nearest dinosaur ancestors, like Velociraptor), tyrannosaurid dinosaurs (T. rex and its kin), and both living and extinct crocodylians.