Professor MacLeod has a wide range of research interests. He is perhaps best known for his work documenting patterns and understanding the causes of Phanerozoic extinctions, especially the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event where he is a leading proponent of the multiple-cause model. Equal in terms of output and prominence is his theoretical, methodological, and applied work in the field of morphometrics where he was an early proponent of geometric morphometrics, Pioneered development of the use of outline semilandmarks to characterize form and shape, the morphometric characterization of 3D surfaces, and most recently the application of computer vision and machine learning methods to the analysis of morphology. Other research interests include macroevolution, evolutionary rates, quantitative biostratigraphy (esp. graphic correlation), applied statistics, and quantitative data analysis (esp. multivariate ordination, discriminant analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, bootstrapping, and jackknifing) and archeological artifact analysis. In addition to his scientific research Dr. MacLeod has developed minor intellectual sidelines in art history (esp. with regard to scientific images) and the effect of evolutionary biology and climate change on human history.
