Benton's research investigates
palaeobiology,
palaeontology, and
macroevolution. His research interests include: diversification of life, quality of the fossil record, shapes of phylogenies, age-clade congruence, mass extinctions, Triassic ecosystem evolution, basal diapsid
phylogeny, basal
archosaurs, and the origin of the dinosaurs. He has made fundamental contributions to understanding the history of life, particularly concerning how biodiversity changes through time. He has led in integrating data from living and fossil organisms to generate phylogenies – solutions to the question of how major groups originated and diversified through time. His work has been published in a variety of journals. Benton has also advised on many media productions including BBC's
Walking with Dinosaurs and was a programme consultant for
Paleoworld on
Discovery Science. He also contributed to the 2002
BBC programme
The Day the Earth Nearly Died, which featured scientists and dealt with the mysteries of the
Permian extinction. In December 2010, Benton had a
rhynchosaur (
Bentonyx) named in his honour. Benton founded the
Master of Science degree programme in Palaeobiology at Bristol in 1996, from which more than 300 students have graduated. Below is a list of
taxa that Benton has contributed to naming:
Publications •
Dinosaurs an A-Z Guide (1988, Kingfisher) •
The phylogeny and classification of the tetrapods (1998, ed. Volumes 1 and 2) •
Prehistoric Animals (1989, Kingfisher) •
Vertebrate Palaeontology (4th edition, 2014, Wiley-Blackwell) •
On the trail of the dinosaur (1989, Quarto Publishing) •
The reign of the reptiles (1991) •
The Rise of the Mammals (1991) •
The fossil record 2 (1993, ed.) •
Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder (1993) •
Fossil reptiles of Great Britain (1995, with P. S. Spencer) •
The Viking atlas of evolution (1997, with R. Osborne) •
The Penguin historical atlas of the dinosaurs (1997) •
Basic Palaeontology (1997, with
D. A. T. Harper) •
Walking with dinosaurs: the facts (2000) •
The age of dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia (2000, ed., with D. M. Unwin, M. A. Shishkin and E. N. Kurochkin) •
Permian and Triassic red beds and the Penarth Group of Great Britain (2002, with E. Cook and P. J. Turner) •
When life nearly died: the greatest mass extinction of all time (1st edition, 2003; 2nd edition, 2008) •
Mesozoic and Tertiary fossil mammals and birds of Great Britain (2005, with L. Cook, D. Schreve, A Currant, and J. J. Hooker) •
Introduction to Paleobiology and the Fossil Record (2009, with David A.T Harper) • The first four billion years •
The Dinosaurs Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution is Rewriting History, (2019) •
Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost World (2021) •
Extinctions: How Life Survives, Adapts and Evolves (2023) •
Dinosaur Behavior: An Illustrated Guide (2023)
Honours and awards Benton was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014 for "substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge" In 2024 he was awarded the Lapworth Medal from the
Palaeontological Association. ==References==