PhD: Diversity and disparity at the dawn of fern evolution

Ferns are one of the most successful plant groups on Earth with more than 10,000 species. Molecular data indicate that the majority of extant ferns appeared during a Cretaceous evolutionary radiation, but the fossil record demonstrates that ferns also achieved exceptionally high diversity and abundance in the Carboniferous and Jurassic periods. This Carboniferous–Jurassic interval was a critical period in the evolutionary history of ferns that set the stage for their later speciation, but it has received relatively little attention from a macroevolutionary perspective. This project aims to reconstruct the Carboniferous–Jurassic macroevolutionary history of ferns using a combination of morphological data from the fossil record, and morphological data from evolutionarily primitive extant ferns. This will establish the timing of key evolutionary steps in the early evolution of ferns, and will examine the degree to which plant diversity is controlled by the composition of Earth's atmosphere on geological timescales.