BAppSc (Hons), PhD
Peter is a self-confessed incurable ‘dino-nut’ having been fascinated by dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals for as long as he can remember. After completing his undergraduate studies in Geoscience at Queensland University in Australia he combined his passion for palaeontology and mathematics in his PhD work at Griffith University, which focused on locomotor biomechanics in theropod dinosaurs. He has been actively involved with the Queensland Museum (Brisbane, Australia) since 2007, and has studied many extinct animals ranging from freshwater crustaceans to stem tetrapods, lizards and dinosaurs (avian and non-avian). Peter is particularly interested in integrating biomechanics with data from fossils, using a rigorous, physics-based approach to examine the adaptive significance of evolutionary changes in the vertebrate skeleton.
Selected publications:
Bishop, P. J. 2014. The humerus of Ossinodus pueri, a stem tetrapod from the Carboniferous of Gondwana, and the early evolution of the tetrapod forelimb. Alcheringa 38: 209–238.
Bishop, P. J., Walmsley, C. W., Phillips, M. J., Quayle, M. R., Boisvert, C. A. and McHenry, C. R. 2015. Oldest Pathology in a Tetrapod Bone Illuminates the Origin of Terrestrial Vertebrates. PLOS ONE 10: e0125723.
Bishop, P.J., Clemente, C.J., Weems, R.E., Graham, D.F., Lamas, L.P., Hutchinson, J.R., Rubenson, J., Wilson, R.S., Hocknull, S.A., Barrett, R.S. and Lloyd, D.G. 2017. Using step width to compare locomotor biomechanics between extinct, non-avian theropod dinosaurs and modern obligate bipeds. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 14: 20170276.
Bishop, P.J., Graham, D.F., Lamas, L.P., Hutchinson, J.R., Rubenson, J., Hancock, J.A., Wilson, R.S., Hocknull, S.A., Barrett, R.S., Lloyd, D.G. and Clemente, C.J. 2018. The influence of speed and size on avian terrestrial locomotor biomechanics: Predicting locomotion in extinct theropod dinosaurs. PLOS ONE 13: e0192172.
Bishop, P.J., Hocknull, S.A., Clemente, C.J., Hutchinson, J.R., Farke, A.A., Barrett, R.S. and Lloyd, D.G. 2018. Cancellous bone architecture and theropod dinosaur locomotor biomechanics. Part III – reconstructing posture and locomotor biomechanics in extinct theropods, and its evolution on the line to birds. PeerJ 6: e5777.
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