Dr Kimi Chapelle is a South African vertebrate palaeobiologist whose research programme seeks to understand the development, growth, and adaptation of the vertebrate skeleton and the sensory structures it houses. She completed her PhD at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University.

Using a multidisciplinary toolkit comprising micro-computed tomography scanning, osteohistology, multivariate statistics, along with functional and comparative anatomy, Dr Kimi Chapelle explores how dinosaurs, and their close relatives grew, moved, and evolved. One of her main academic focal areas is early branching sauropodomorph dinosaurs. Sauropodomorphs include the largest terrestrial vertebrates to have ever evolved. During 165 million years of sauropodomorph evolution, the group underwent noteworthy macroevolutionary changes in body mass, locomotion, and diet. She also studies comparative living model systems using this toolkit to better understand the fossil record.

Enthusiastic about science communication, Dr Kimi Chapelle has shared her expertise through various public talks, TEDx Johannesburg, and appearances on podcasts and panels such as National Geographic Facebook Live and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk. She has also assisted in writing several children’s books.

Dr Kimi Chapelle has a passion for fieldwork and has participated in various expeditions around the world including in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and the USA. Her current fieldwork focuses on the Mesozoic of southern Africa, exploring poorly known parts of the Triassic and Jurassic fossil record. These research goals comprise describing unpublished specimens and taxa, exploring their growth strategies, and investigating their macroevolutionary patterns and trends.