Description du projet
Rassembler un nouvel ensemble de données pour résoudre le mystère de la diversité
La diversité de la vie sur terre est impressionnante: plus des trois quarts de toutes les espèces de la planète vivent sur la terre ferme. Cependant, les scientifiques tentent toujours de comprendre comment cette incroyable diversité a évolué au cours de millions d’années. Financé par le Conseil européen de la recherche, le projet TERRA cherchera à réévaluer le paradigme dominant de la diversification terrestre. Alors que les analyses précédentes de la diversification des tétrapodes ont été problématiques et dépassées, TERRA utilisera les technologies les plus récentes ainsi que des méthodologies rigoureuses pour mettre en lumière les schémas à long terme de la diversité terrestre. À cette fin, il rassemblera un nouvel ensemble de données détaillant la distribution temporelle et spatiale des tétrapodes terrestres sur l’ensemble de leur registre fossile, avec un niveau de détail sans précédent.
Objectif
Life on land today is spectacularly diverse, representing 75–95% of all species on Earth. However, it remains unclear how this extraordinary diversity has been acquired across deep geological time. This research project will address this major knowledge gap by reassessing the dominant paradigm of terrestrial diversification, an exponential increase in diversity over the last 375 million years, using the rich and well-studied fossil record of tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates) as an exemplar group. Previous analyses of tetrapod diversification have been based on an outdated and problematic dataset that is likely to artificially inflate apparent diversity towards the present day. A major new dataset will be assembled, detailing the spatial and temporal distribution of terrestrial tetrapods across their entire fossil record in unprecedented detail. These data will be analysed using the latest approaches to sampling-standardisation in order to generate completely novel, rigorous curves of diversification through time. These will be compared within a cutting-edge statistical framework to alternate diversification models, as well as to changes in rock record sampling, global environments (e.g. sea level and atmospheric composition) and marine diversity. These comparisons will allow us to address the following key questions: (i) Does terrestrial diversification follow an exponential pattern over the last 375 million years? (ii) Is the terrestrial fossil record as complete as the marine fossil record? (iii) Are long-term patterns of terrestrial diversification driven by physical changes in the Earth system such as climate change? (iv) Did marine and terrestrial biodiversity follow similar trajectories across geological time? (v) How severely did mass extinction events impact upon terrestrial tetrapod diversification? Our work will establish a new, rigorous paradigm for the long-term pattern of terrestrial diversification, and test and identify its drivers.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitution d’accueil
B15 2TT Birmingham
Royaume-Uni