Institution: University of Edinburgh
Supervisor(s): Rachel Wood (GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, UK),
Amelia Penny (GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, UK)
Sean McMahon (Physics, University of Edinburgh, UK)
Collen Uahengo (Earth Sciences, University of Namibia, Namibia)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Expiry Date: Monday, January 6, 2025
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Supervisor(s): Stig Walsh National Museums Scotland s.walsh@nms.ac.uk
Stephen Brusatte School of GeoSciences Stephen.Brusatte@ed.ac.uk
Erin Maxwell Staatliches Museum fuer Natururkunde erin.maxwell@smns-bw.de
Davide Foffa National Museums Scotland davidefoffa@gmail.com
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: Ichthyosaurs are sea reptiles that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs. Like modern dolphins, their aquatic adaptations were so complete that they resembled fish and even gave birth underwater to live young. They occupied a wide variety of ecological niches, and some evolved immense sizes. Their fossils have been studied for over 200 years, and while many aspects of their palaeobiology are well-known, important questions remain. For example, several ichthyosaur radiations occurred before their extinction in the Late Cretaceous. More information...
Expiry Date: Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Institution: The Open University
Supervisor(s): Dr Luke Mander (The Open University, Dr Tom Stubbs (The Open University), Dr Sarah Phillips (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), Dr Carlos Jaramillo (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: OVERVIEW
Life is extraordinarily diverse, with an estimated total of ~8.7 million species living on Earth today
(Mora et al. 2011). Studies of species distributions show that the tropics are considerably richer in
species than higher latitudes, a pattern known as the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) (Wiens &
Donoghue 2004). This global-scale biogeographic pattern is remarkably consistent across geographic
areas, scales and habitats, and it has been quantified hundreds of times in marine and terrestrial
taxa (Hillebrand 2004). More information...
Expiry Date: Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Institution: University of Southampton
Supervisor(s): Prof. Tom Ezard (University of Southampton), Dr. Alison Cribb (University of Southampton), Dr. Chris Goatley (University of Southampton)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: Coral reef ecosystems are experiencing extreme ecological changes under the stress of climate change, threatening some of the most important biodiversity hotspots on Earth. The fossil record during ancient climate change intervals holds clues into what the future holds for coral reefs under the threat of climate change. More information...
Expiry Date: Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Institution: University of Southampton
Supervisor(s): Dr Richard Stockey (University of Southampton), Professor Clive Trueman (University of Southampton)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: Project overview
Marine ecosystems are under urgent threat from ocean warming, deoxygenation and acidification today. Earth has warmed (and cooled) many times before, with sustained warm periods that resemble worst-case-scenario predictions for modern climate change. In this project you will investigate the impacts of these climate extremes on marine ecosystems.
Project description More information...
Expiry Date: Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Institution: University of Birmingham
Supervisor(s): Prof. Kirsty Edgar (University of Birmingham), Prof. Richard Butler (University of Birmingham), Dr Jonathan Larwood (Natural England),
Joshua Smith (Natural England)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: Project highlights:
Study the nature, importance and relative value of the UK vertebrate fossil track record
Field- and lab-based project to develop skills in scientific description, recording and monitoring of vertebrate fossil track sites
Work closely with Natural England (the government advisor for the natural environment in England) to determine how best to conserve and manage vertebrate fossil track sites More information...
Expiry Date: Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Institution: University of Cambridge
Supervisor(s): Dr Emily G Mitchell and Prof Andrea Manica, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: Life has existed on Earth for more than 3.5 billion years, but it is only around 600 million years ago, during the Ediacaran time period (635 – 541 Ma), that animals appear in the rock record. It is during the Ediacaran animals evolved some of their most important traits: most obviously large body-size but also tissue-differentiation, mobility, bilateral symmetry and ecosystem engineering (reef-building). Over the last ten years, mathematical ecological approaches have demonstrated how previously elusive biological details can be extracted from the Ediacaran fossil record. More information...
Expiry Date: Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Institution: University of Liverpool
Supervisor(s):
Professor Karl Bates, University of Liverpool
Dr Natalie Cooper, Natural History Museum
Professor Peter Falkingham, Liverpool John Moores University
Dr Alice Maher, University of Liverpool
Professor Phil Mannion, UCL
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Expiry Date: Thursday, January 9, 2025
Institution: British Antarctic Survey
Supervisor(s):
Dr Rowan Whittle (British Antarctic Survey)
Professor Daniela Schmidt (University of Bristol)
Dr Saurav Dutta (British Antarctic Survey)
Dr Alex Dunhill (University of Leeds)
Dr James Witts (Natural History Museum)
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: The Eocene epoch is a time of immense change in the global climate when Antarctica transitioned from a
greenhouse environment to an icehouse environment. Ecosystems responded to these changes, but there
is a lack of knowledge of responses on the shelf and especially in higher latitudes. The student will make
the first quantified reconstructions of benthic marine community structure throughout the Eocene of
Antarctica using new samples collected this year. More information...
Expiry Date: Monday, January 13, 2025
Institution: University of Bristol
Supervisor(s):
Lead Supervisor: Philip Donoghue, University of Bristol, School of Earth Sciences
Co-Supervisor: James Clark, University of Bath, Department of Life Sciences
Co-Supervisor: John Cunningham, University of Bristol, School of Earth Sciences
Co-Supervisor: David Pisani, University of Bristol, School of Biological Sciences
Co-Supervisor: Tom Williams, University of Bristol, School of Biological Sciences
Funding Status: Funding is in competition with other projects and students
Description: The origin of eukaryotes is one of the most significant and unlikely events in evolutionary history, characterised by the origin of a cytoskeleton and organelles including the nucleus, mitochondria, lysosomes and endosomes, that facilitated the origin of all complex life. Determining the timing and order of acquisition of these key innovations is critical to testing hypotheses of eukaryogenesis but living organisms either have all or none of these characters; our only hope of elucidating the pattern of eukaryogenesis is the fossil record. More information...
Expiry Date: Monday, January 13, 2025
