[1] Following graduation, Brighton pursued palaeontological research at Cambridge, paying for this study with supervising positions he gained in the Colleges.
He published his first paper on Cretaceous Echinoids from Nigeria in 1925, and studied the collections of the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences.
Brighton brought in a new system for cataloguing items, such that the first instance of an object's description would be noted for future reference and citation.
[1] Brighton was also involved in displaying and rotating the collections he came into contact with for public exhibition and the loan and exchange of objects and research queries.
The A.G. Brighton medal, established in 1989 is given every 3 years to honour a candidate who either works with geological specimens or has led to improvements in the use of them in teaching.