Institution: University of Leeds
Supervisor(s): Dr Tracy Aze (University of Leeds); Dr Eleanor John (University of Cardiff); Prof Paul Pearson (UCL); Prof Sandra Piazolo (University of Leeds)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: Project Summary
Planktonic foraminifera are single-celled marine protists that build a calcium carbonate (calcite) shell, which is readily preservable in deep sea marine sediments. They have existed for ~150 million years, are found in all our global oceans, and have one of the best species-level fossil records known to science. Consequently, they are widely employed for palaeoenvironmental and biostratigraphic research and are increasingly becoming a model system for macroevolutionary analysis. More information...
Expiry Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Institution: University of Leeds
Supervisor(s): Prof Paul Wignall and Dr Tracy Aze (University of Leeds)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: The longest delay: the slow recovery from the Hangenberg mass extinction More information...
Expiry Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Institution: University of Leeds
Supervisor(s): Prof Benjamin Mills (University of Leeds), Dr Alex Krause, Dr Andrew Rushby (UCL/Birkbeck), Dr Christopher Colose (NASA)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: The list of ‘potentially Earth-like’ rocky exoplanets in the galaxy continues to grow, and recent instrumental advances are paving the way to the analysis of their atmospheric compositions. But which planets should we study in more detail? Are planets larger or smaller than Earth more likely to host complex (e.g. multicellular or eukaryotic) life? Should we be looking around stars larger or smaller than our own Sun? Do planets need to be of a certain age before complex life becomes possible? More information...
Expiry Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Institution: University of Leeds
Supervisor(s): Prof Natasha Barlow, Dr Amy McGuire (University of Leeds), Prof Christopher Lane
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: Models of future climate change are, for the most part, informed by observational data spanning the last c.150 years – a period that has seen only limited climatic variability. To test our long-term projections of Earth system responses we exploit the geological record. Previous climatically warm periods, e.g. the Last Interglacial (LIG; 130-116 ka), provide natural laboratories to study landscape and ecosystem responses to warmer-than-present conditions. More information...
Expiry Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Institution: University of Leeds
Supervisor(s): Dr Alex Dunhill (University of Leeds), Dr Elizabeth Petsios (Baylor University), Dr Jack Shaw (Santa Fe Institute), Prof Andrew Beckerman (University of Sheffield), Prof Paul Wignall (University of Leeds)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: Background
The diversity of modern marine animals has increased dramatically over the past 230 million years, beginning with an event called the Mesozoic Marine Revolution (MMR). Over this period, marine fauna has gradually developed from sessile, epifaunal benthic assemblages in the Palaeozoic and early Mesozoic to more motile and structured/tiered communities we see today through the Late Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous.
Is there evidence of changes in trophic structure and trait evolution that indicate evolutionary escalation in Mesozoic oceans? More information...
Expiry Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Institution: University of Leeds
Supervisor(s): Prof Caroline Peacock, Prof Simon Poulton and Prof Benjamin Mills (University of Leeds)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: In this project you will investigate how the availability of iron and manganese in the oceans controls the global carbon and oxygen cycles, and hence the evolution of Earth’s climate and surface conditions over past, present and future timescales.
Project background:
The availability of macronutrients (like phosphorus and nitrogen) and micronutrients (like iron and manganese) has played a fundamental role in regulating climate and surface conditions over Earth’s history, and will play a critical role in sustaining life on our planet into the future. More information...
Expiry Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Institution: University of Leeds
Supervisor(s): Dr Robert Newton (University of Leeds), Prof Igor Vlahovic (University of Zagreb), Prof Paul Wignall (University of Leeds)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: The Early Jurassic (201-174 Myrs ago) represents a time of marked environmental changes and evolution of the Earth system: Climate oscillated between cold and warm modes (Korte and Hesselbo, 2011), seawater chemistry changed substantially (Weldeghebriel et al., 2022) and, along with the evolution of calcifiers, drove changes in the location and mineralogy of carbonate deposition (Ridgwell, 2005; Sandberg, 1983). The carbon cycle underwent several perturbations thought to be driven by volcanism and often associated with the reduced availability of oxygen in the oceans. More information...
Expiry Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Institution: University of Leeds
Supervisor(s): Prof Simon Poulton and Prof Benjamin Mills (University of Leeds), Prof Andrey Bekker (UC Riverside)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: The rise of oxygen on the early Earth has been recognised as one of the most significant episodes in the history of our planet, and this initial rise set in motion a prolonged chain of events that ultimately resulted in the habitable conditions we now enjoy. In recent years, the topic of early Earth oxygenation has received a huge amount of attention, and almost without exception, traditional views on the timing, causes and consequences of oxygenation have been shown to be incorrect (e.g., Krause et al., 2018; Alcott et al., 2019). More information...
Expiry Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Institution: Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Supervisor(s): Prof. Duncan Mcilroy
Funding Status: Funding is in place for this project
Description: The new Inner Meadow Ediacaran locality in Conception Bay, only an hour drive from St. John’s, contains a dense diverse assemblage of the rangeomorphs Primocandelabrum, Charnia gracilis, Charnia sp. and related taxa; several of which are new/undescribed taxa. The site was discovered in 2022 at the edge of a small coastal community and partly exposed in 2023. We will conduct the remaining excavations in 2024 to expose the surface from beneath a layer of soil- who know what we will find! More information...
Expiry Date: Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Institution: The University of Sheffield
Supervisor(s): Dr Thomas Guillerme (The University of Sheffield), Dr Gavin Thomas (The university of Sheffield), Dr Natalie Cooper (Natural History Museum London).
Funding Status: Funding is in place for this project
Description: Background: Understanding the effects of mass extinctions on life on Earth is of crucial importance in the context of the current biodiversity crisis. One interesting aspect is how the extinction of many species can shape the evolution of surviving species. Theory proposes that groups surviving a mass extinction event can diversify to occupy the ecological niches left vacant by the extinct species. More information...
Expiry Date: Wednesday, May 22, 2024
