Animal Origins and Morphology Lab
Members of the ANOM Lab are spending this week at the Soleil Synchrotron (@synchroSOLEIL) near Paris. Postdoc Pierre Gueriau is leading the project, which aims to tease out new anatomical details from Fezouata Biota fossils using the Synchrotron for x-ray fluorescence (XRF) elemental mapping. Francesc Perez Peris, Lorenzo Lustri, Lukas Laibl and Farid Saleh are all on site lending a hand with the research. Synchrotron – it’s not just for 3D tomography anymore!
A big welcome goes out to our new lab members, who joined us in Lausanne during the last few months. Pierre Gueriau is our new postdoctoral researcher, working on Fezouata Biota bivalved arthropods and developing new imaging and analytical techniques for looking at exceptionally preserved fossils. Frances Pérez Peris and Lorenzo Lustri are both starting 4-year PhDs here. Fran will be working on Ordovician trilobites, and Lorenzo will be studying fossil horseshoe crabs. We look forward to working with you!
This week in PNAS, the ANOM Lab (Daley, Antcliffe, Drage & Pates) published a Perspective that examines multiple sources of fossil data – including exceptionally preserved BST-type fossils, shelly fossils, microfosssils and trace fossil – to describe the timing of the origin and evolution of euarthropods. By comparing the modes of preservation between the Cambrian and Precambrian, we concluded that there is no evidence for euarthropods in the Precambrian. Using this comprehensive approach, we suggest that the first appearance of euarthropods was between 537 and 550 million years ago. There was no deep Precambrian root to the origin of euarthropods, and instead this evolution played out during the first 30 to 40 million years of the Cambrian. Read about it here:
Original PNAS article:
Daley et al. 2018 Euarthropod evolution and the Cambrian Explosion
News coverage:
Radio interview with Allison Daley for CQFD, Radio Télévision Suisse:
We are happy to announce that one of our external collaborators – Dr. Greg Edgecombe from the Natural History Museum, London – was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society. Many congratulations Greg!
