Benton's research investigates palaeobiology, palaeontology, and macroevolution.[1][10][11] His research interests include: diversification of life, quality of the fossil record, shapes of phylogenies, age-clade congruence, mass extinctions,[12] Triassic ecosystem evolution, basal diapsid phylogeny, basal archosaurs, and the origin of the dinosaurs. He has made fundamental contributions to understanding the history of life, particularly concerning how biodiversity changes through time.[13] He has led in integrating data from living and fossil organisms to generate phylogenies – solutions to the question of how major groups originated and diversified through time.[13] This approach has revolutionised the understanding of major questions, including the relative roles of internal and external drivers on the history of life, whether diversity reaches saturation, the significance of mass extinctions, and how major clades radiate.[13] A key theme is the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the largest mass extinction of all time, which took place over 250 million years ago, where he investigates how life was able to recover from such a devastating event.[13]
Benton founded the Master of Science degree programme in Palaeobiology at Bristol in 1996, from which more than 300 students have graduated.[13] He has supervised more than 50 PhD students.[13]
As the Initiator of the Bristol Dinosaur Project Benton was also involved with creating and designing the website for the project.[20]
The age of dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia (2000, ed., with D. M. Unwin, M. A. Shishkin and E. N. Kurochkin)[ISBN missing]
Permian and Triassic red beds and the Penarth Group of Great Britain (2002, with E. Cook and P. J. Turner)[ISBN missing]
When life nearly died: the greatest mass extinction of all time (1st edition, 2003; 2nd edition, 2008)[21]
Mesozoic and Tertiary fossil mammals and birds of Great Britain (2005, with L. Cook, D. Schreve, A Currant, and J. J. Hooker) ISBN9781861074805
Introduction to Paleobiology and the Fossil Record (2009, with David A.T Harper) ISBN9781405141574
The first four billion years Benton, Michael J. (2009). "Paleontology and the History of Life". In Michael Ruse; Joseph Travis (eds.). Evolution: The First Four Billion Years. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp. 80–104. ISBN978-0-674-03175-3.
The Dinosaurs Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution is Rewriting History, (2019) ISBN978-0500052006
^Benton, Michael James (1983). "The Triassic Reptile Hyperodapedon from Elgin: Functional Morphology and Relationships". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 302 (1112): 605–718. Bibcode:1983RSPTB.302..605B. doi:10.1098/rstb.1983.0079. ISSN0962-8436.
^Benton, M. J.; Emerson, B. C. (2007). "How Did Life Become So Diverse? The Dynamics of Diversification According to the Fossil Record and Molecular Phylogenetics". Palaeontology. 50 (1): 23–40. Bibcode:2007Palgy..50...23B. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2006.00612.x.
