Despite growing up in the landlocked Black Country of England, I spent most of my youth learning whatever I could about life in the oceans. This fascination with the deep blue carried me to the University of Southampton where, in the process of completing a M.Sci. in Marine Biology, I discovered my passion for evolutionary history. Consequently, I spent the final year of my studies doing as much palaeobiology and as little marine biology as my lecturers would allow. After an ill-fated foray into the world of professional publishing, I completed my Ph.D. in Geology at the University of Bristol, after which I came to Oxford to join the Department of Earth Sciences as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in 2022. I joined Exeter College as a Stipendiary Lecturer in Earth Sciences in 2023 and was awarded an Early Career Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust in 2024. Moving from the Department of Earth Sciences to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, I started this fellowship in 2025.
Research
I am both taxonomically and temporally agnostic, having tackled questions regarding the evolutionary histories of fungi, molluscs, brachiopods, jawed vertebrates, and more. The thread that connects these studies is my interest in finding new ways to disentangle the macroevolutionary patterns preserved by the fossil record from the artefacts of decay, fossilisation, sampling, and experimental design that distort them. Across different projects, I have attempted to do this in different ways. In some, I have developed new approaches for standardising empirical data, whilst in others I have used eco-evolutionary simulations to constrain the range of possible outcomes for different sources of bias.
Currently, I have three major streams of research that focus on:
1. The role of competitive displacement in the brachiopod-bivalve transition.
2. Diversification dynamics before, during, and after the Cambrian explosion.
3. General patterns in organismal morphological variety and the processes that shape them.
Teaching
At Exeter College, I provide pastoral support and mentorship for undergraduate Earth Scientists, and deliver tutorials aimed at reinforcing what they have learned from their lectures and honing other skills that will serve them well wherever life takes them after studies.
Selected publications
Smith, T. J., Parry, L. A., Dunn, F. S. and Garwood, R. J. (2024). Exploring the macroevolutionary impact of ecosystem engineers using an individual-based eco-evolutionary simulation. Palaeontology 67, e12701. https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.12701
Johnson, E., Margulis-Ohnuma, M., Smith, T. J., Butts, S. H., Lutz, C. and Briggs, D. E. G. (2024). Morphotype matters: an experimental analysis of the morphological fidelity of gastropod steinkerns. Palaios 39, 225-232. http://dx.doi.org/10.2110/palo.2023.041
Smith, T. J., Sansom, R. S., Pisani, D. and Donoghue, P. C. J. (2023). Fossilization can mislead analyses of phenotypic disparity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 290, 20230522. http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.0522
Smith, T. J. and Donoghue, P. C. J. (2022). Evolution of fungal phenotypic disparity. Nature Ecology & Evolution 6, 1489-1500. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01844-6
