PhD: Diversity and anatomy of Devonian jawless vertebrates

The evolution of jawed vertebrates from jawless ancestors is a fundamental episode in the history of life and of our own species. Fortunately there are a panoply of fossil taxa that can help us reconstruct the timing and nature of this evolution transition: the armoured jawless fishes. These ostracoderms preserve a lost world of diverse jawless fossil vertebrates and reveal the stepwise acquisition of gnathostome characters along the stem-lineage. This PhD project will directly address this evolutionary episode by analysing fossil data from a new Early Devonian site in Shropshire. This will range from traditional palaeontological techniques to the advanced cutting edge. In the first instance you will establish the taxonomy and diversity of the heterostracans and osteostracans from this new site. Secondly, you will you interpret the synchrotron data that we have collected on these specimens from which the geochemistry shows insights into the preservation, histology, ontogeny, and ecology of these ostracoderms. Alongside this, we will be undertaking tomographic analysis of ostracoderms to reconstruct their internal anatomy. Together these analyses will provide a wide range of training and an overarching evolutionary investigation into the diversity and function of these important taxa, and thus provide insights into the evolutionary origins of our own group, the jawed vertebrates.
Applicants must have obtained or be about to obtain a First or Upper Second class UK honours degree, in an appropriate area of science, engineering or technology. Funding for this PhD is only open to UK candidates. You must be able to start the PhD by July 2024 at the latest. The application deadline is 31st January 2024.