Patricia Kelley

Patricia Kelley is known for her research on the evolutionary history of predator-prey interactions in the fossil record. Her work focuses particularly on drilling predation by naticid and muricid gastropods, which leave distinctive boreholes in fossil bivalve and gastropod shells.

Naticid and muricid gastropods are marine snails that prey on other mollusks by drilling holes into their shells using rasping radulae and chemical secretions. Kelley studies these boreholes in the fossil record to understand long-term evolutionary patterns in predator-prey dynamics.

Patricia Kelley has been affiliated with the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she has conducted much of her paleontological research. Her published work appears in major paleontology and geology journals examining predator-prey coevolution.

Kelley's research documents how drilling predation by gastropods has evolved over geological timescales, using borehole frequency and morphology in fossil shells as evidence. Her findings have contributed significantly to understanding co-evolutionary arms races between predators and their prey through deep time.