Current PhD projects in Palaeontology | |
6 projects found
Institution: Southampton, University of
Supervisor(s): Professor John Marshall
Contact: John Marshall (jeam@noc.soton.ac.uk)
Funding: Funding is in place for this project
Following the Devonian-Carboniferous mass extinction tetrapods disappeared from the fossil record for 20 million years (Romer’s Gap). A number of sites with Romer's Gap tetrapods have been discovered in the Scottish Borders and NERC has awarded a Consortium Grant to study them. To tie these sites together and understand the relationships between environment, evolution and time a 500 m borehole is being drilled through the entire succession. The work will primarily be on the fossil spores from the borehole and a number of tetrapod sites and other field localities across the Midland Valley of Scotland. The student will be fully involved in logging field sections, excavating tetrapod sites and borehole sampling and be expected to work closely with other specialists to develop an integrated environmental model and a refined spore/ostracod zonation scheme. It is a unique opportunity to work with a consortium of specialists from the universities of Southampton, Leicester and Cambridge, the BGS and the NMS on a project that promises to rewrite our concept of tetrapod evolution. The palynological training will give enhanced employment prospects in the energy industry.
Project uploaded on 02 May 2013, entry expires on 31 May 2013
Institution: Royal Holloway University of London
Supervisor(s): Prof Margaret Collinson, Prof Andrew Scott. Prof Rich Pancost (Bristol)
Contact: Margaret Collinson or Kathryn Hardy (Earth Sciences PGR administrator) (M.collinson@es.rhul.ac.uk)
Funding: Funding is in place for this project
Applications are invited for a fully funded NERC research studentship for 42 months starting in late September 2012. The studentship, to be based at Royal Holloway University of London, is linked to a NERC standard grant entitled “Terrestrial methane cycling during Palaeogene greenhouse climates” led by Pancost (Bristol) with Singarayer (Bristol), Beerling (Sheffield) and Collinson & Scott (Royal Holloway) and including project partners from various countries.
The student will undertake palaeobotanical and coal maceral analyses, including study of charcoals, on lignite samples to determine peat-forming vegetation types and the importance of fire in the Eocene greenhouse climate. In addition, the work of the student will contribute to the overall grant (and result in co-authored publications with the grant team) by providing insight into peat forming environments that will inform interpretation of wetland biogeochemistry and provide an additional mechanism for testing model outputs.
Project uploaded on 28 May 2012, entry expires on 25 May 2013
Institution: Lille1, University of
Supervisor(s): Thijs Vandenbroucke (Lille) and Jean-François Ghienne (Strasbourg)
Contact: Thijs Vandenbroucke (Thijs.vandenbroucke@univ-lille1.fr)
Funding: Funding is in place for this project
The glaciogenic sedimentary record is our only direct archive of ancient glaciations. Understanding this archive is of fundamental scientific importance when modelling past climate change but also of socio-economic importance as they are key reservoir rocks for petroleum as well as for groundwater. This ANR (French research council) research project aims to develop an original, universal sequence stratigraphic model for glaciogenic successions, enabling the investigation of the glaciogenic records through space and time. It includes numerical modelling efforts of glaciation-related depositional systems, alongside an in-depth sequence stratigraphic study of ancient glacial records.
The fieldwork-based PhD fellowship integrates the deep-time data collecting part of project, and will be focusing on the extremely well-exposed and well-developed Late Ordovician glacial record of Morocco. One of the main tasks will be the study of chitinozoan micropalaeontology and geochemistry in a sedimentological and sequence stratigraphic context, based on carefully selected near-field sections. Comparison with far-field low-and-mid-palaeolatitude sections will also be part of the project.
Project uploaded on 27 Nov 2012, entry expires on 01 Jul 2013
Institution: Sheffield, University of
Supervisor(s): Prof Charles Wellman & Prof Patricia Gensel
Contact: Charles Wellman (c.wellman@sheffield.ac.uk)
Funding: Funding not guaranteed for this project, but is available in competition with other projects and students
One of the most important localities for the study of early terrestrial ecosystems is the Lower Devonian terrestrial deposits of New Brunswick, eastern Canada. These deposits have been studied for over half a century and yield exquisitely preserved plants, arthropods and fish, including lagerstatte with plants exceptionally preserved by ash falls. Unfortunately, however, the dispersed spore assemblages from these deposits have never been described, despite preliminary studies proving that they contain abundant, diverse and exquisitely preserved spores. This gap in knowledge has hindered interpretation of these important non-marine biotas. The aim of this project is to undertake the first detailed study of the dispersed spore assemblages from these deposits. They will be used to: (i) provide a secure biostratigraphical framework for analysis of the biotas (complementing a recent detailed sedimentological study); (ii) analyse the palaeoecology of the floras by integrating quantitative analysis of the dispersed spores with knowledge of their parent plants (gleaned through studies of in situ spores) biology and ecology.
Project uploaded on 13 Dec 2012, entry expires on 01 Oct 2013
Institution: University College London
Supervisor(s): Paul Upchurch, Anjali Goswami, Paul Barrett, Philip Mannion, Susannah Maidment
Contact: Paul Upchurch (p.upchurch@ucl.ac.uk)
Funding: Funding not guaranteed for this project, but is available in competition with other projects and students
Sauropodomorph dinosaurs originated 230 million years ago) and rapidly achieved a global distribution. They originated from small bipedal ancestral dinosaurs, but evolved into gigantic (30 m long) herbivores during the first 30 million years of their evolutionary history. Many aspects of the origin of sauropodomorphs remain poorly understood, including the details of the adaptations that enabled small bipeds to become quadrupedal and give rise to the largest terrestrial animals. In recent years, there have been many discoveries of sauropodomorph fossils. New techniques for analysing the stance and locomotor abilities of extinct animals have also been created: however, these have been applied to very few sauropodomorphs. In this project, we propose: (1) the collection of data on the earliest sauropodomorph dinosaurs: (2) analyses of their evolutionary relationships; (3) reconstruction of the stances and locomotor abilities of sauropodomorphs ranging from the early small bipeds to the gigantic quadrupeds; and (4) combined use of phylogenetic and stance/locomotor data to test hypotheses relating to the evolution of gigantic body size in terrestrial animals.
Project uploaded on 29 Nov 2012, entry expires on 29 Nov 2013
Institution: Durham, University of (Van Mildert College)
Supervisor(s): Various
Contact: The Principal, Van Mildert College, Mill Hill Lane, Durham DH1 3LH, U.K (vmc.trust@durham.ac.uk)
Funding: Funding not guaranteed for this project, but is available in competition with other projects and students
The Van Mildert College Trust Research Scholarship is open for applications - this provides a student bursary for the research project of their choice. Applications must be in by Friday 31st May
Project uploaded on 07 May 2013, entry expires on 31 May 2013
Supervisors: upload project details
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