- Titre du projet
- Ecomorphological patterns of the skull and vertebral column in mammals and evolutionary adaptive strategies to climatic changes (
- Descriptif du projet
- The project entitled "Ecomorphological patterns of the skull and vertebral column in mammals and evolutionary adaptive strategies to climatic changes" is a project that will generate an innovative understanding of the evolution of the different adaptive strategies of mammals front climatic changes and better understand the patterns of diversity and disparity that exist in mammals throughout the Cenozoic to the present day. The project will use non-invasive and innovative virtual methodologies, generating a reference 3D data set of skulls, teeth and vertebrae that will allow to investigate the evolution at the craneodental and columnar levels in the main clades of mammals. From these data it will be possible to quantify the morphological variability and correlate these data with different ecomorphological adaptations to different climatic and ecological ranges. For this, engineering methods such as finite element analysis (biomechanics) and kinematics will be used together with computational fluid analysis (CFD). This will help to better understand the plasticity or adaptive capacity of the species front climatic and ecological changes. Also to be able to quantify the biological limits of different clades of mammals. It will allow us to better understand the different evolutionary strategies to adapt species to these changes in the environment. These results will generate prediction models that help us to reconstruct the palaeoecology and palaeophysiology of extinct animals, even to foresee how the effects of climate change will affect species. With this, it will be possible to quantify which clades or groups of mammals are or will be more prone to extinction or to adapt.
Travaux réalisés par la plateforme AST-RX
