Paul researches the functional, evolutionary and developmental bases of skeletal morphological variation, especially in primates and reptiles. His aim is to explain how different skeletal morphologies arise during evolution in terms of developmental processes and functional adaptations. The key underpinning technologies are morphometric, especially geometric morphometric methods, CT imaging, scanning electron microscopy and modelling approaches such as multibody dynamics and finite elements analysis. The advances in morphometrics that have arisen during this work are also being applied in functional studies and imaging.