01 October 2026
Meet our new King's Prize Research Fellow, Dr Elis Newham
From mammal fossils millions of years old to living crocodiles, Dr Elis Newham uses innovative imaging techniques to uncover the hidden stories preserved within teeth.
As a newly appointed King's Prize Research Fellow, Elis joins the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences with an internationally recognised research programme focused on understanding how microscopic structures in tissues record physiology, growth and life history across living and extinct animals.
Reading life's history in teeth
Elis is an evolutionary biologist who develops new ways to study microscopic tissue structures to learn about an animal's life history.
His research has helped advance the use of synchrotron X-ray imaging to study teeth, especially dental cementum. This tissue grows throughout an animal's life and keeps a record of growth patterns that can reveal an animal's age, development, and aspects of its biology and health.
By analysing these records, Elis has helped shed light on major physiological changes during mammalian evolution, providing new insights into how species adapted over millions of years.
Alongside his work on teeth, Elis has contributed to the development of TomoSAXS, a novel multimodal imaging technique that combines CT scanning with small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS).
The technology allows researchers to study how soft tissues work at different scales, opening up new ways to explore complex collagen-rich structures like intervertebral discs.
King's Prize project
Through his King's Prize Fellowship, Elis will explore how growth records preserved in teeth can be used across a much broader range of animals.
His project studies cementochronology, a method that uses growth layers in tooth cementum to estimate age. The research aims to expand its use beyond mammals by studying crocodilians, which continuously replace their teeth throughout their lives.
A key part of the research will utilise the Mark Ferguson Collection, a world-leading collection of crocodilian specimens with known life histories that is managed by colleagues at King's.
Working with this unique resource, Elis aims to understand how cementum growth records form across an animal's lifetime and through multiple generations of teeth. The findings will help identify which aspects of life history can be reliably interpreted in both living and fossil species.
