The Palaeontological Association 58th Annual Meeting
Welcome to our coverage of the Palaeontological Association’s 58th Annual Meeting, hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. This conference took place between the 16th and 18th December 2014.
Tuesday 16th: Symposium: ‘The photosynthesis revolution: how plants and photosynthetic micro-organisms have bioengineered the planet’.
Cyanobacteria and the Great Oxidation Event: Evidence from genes and fossils
Dr. Bettina Schirrmeister (University of Bristol)
Evidence for terrestrial photosynthetic organisms in the Proterozoic: the land becomes vegetated
Professor Charles Wellman (University of Sheffield)
Wednesday 17th
Life and death at high latitudes: a reassessment of the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event in Antarctica
James D. Witts, Paul B. Wignall, Jane E. Francis, Robert J. Newton, J. Alistair Crame, Vanessa C. Bowman and Rowan J. Whittle
The role of microbial anaerobic respiration in the end-Permian mass extinction
Martin Schobben, Alan Stebbins, Abbas Ghaderi, Harald Strauss, Dieter Korn, Robyn Hannigan and Christoph Korte
Post-Chicxulub radiation and dispersal of Worm Lizards (Amphisbaenia)
Nicholas R Longrich, Jakob Vinther, Alexander Pyron, Davide Pisani and Jacques Gauthier
Extratropical peaks in Cretaceous terrestrial vertebrate diversity: the influence of primary producers on vertebrate species distribution
Mark A. Bell, Paul Upchurch, Philip D. Mannion, Roger B. J. Benson and Anjali Goswami
A Morphological Analysis of the Pectoral Girdle Skeleton of Soaring Birds
Megan E Williams
Craniodental biomechanical character evolution within the Sauropodomorpha, and the influence of dietary evolution on gigantism.
David J. Button
A 3D approach: investigating dietary evolution in Archaeocete whales (Cetacea: Archaeoceti) using tooth microtextures
Robert H Goodall, Mark A Purnell, Julia M Fahlke and Katharina A Bastl
The curious case of chaetae in brachiopods from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale
Timothy P. Topper, Lars E. Holmer, Luke Strotz, Noel Tait, Zhifei Zhang and Jean-Bernard Caron
Deciphering brachiopod origins: The Cambrian Explosion, small shelly fossils and early evolutionary history of Lophotrochozoa.
Aodhàn D. Butler, Michael Streng, Zhifei Zhang, Russell Garwood and Lars E. Holmer
Minerals in the gut: Scoping a Cambrian digestive system
Katie M. Strang, David A T. Harper and Howard A. Armstrong
Puckered, Woven and Grooved: the Importance of Substrate for Ediacara Paleoecology, Paleoenvironment and Taphonomy
Lidya G. Tarhan, Mary L. Droser and James G. Gehling
Thursday 18th
‘Fish’ (Actinopterygii and Elasmobranchii) diversification patterns through deep time
Guillaume Guinot and Lionel Cavin
Denticle Déjà Vu, and the Evolution of Speed
Tom Merrick-Fletcher, John D Altringham, Jeff Peakall, Paul B Wignall, Robert M Dorrell and Gareth M Keevil
A fight for survival: Megalodon vs the Great White shark
Laura Mclennan and Mark Purnell
Patterns of morpho-functional disparity during the explosive radiation of acanthomorph fishes
Roger A Close, Matt Friedman, Zerina Johansen, Hermione Beckett and Dan Delbarre
Exceptionally preserved Devonian actinopterygian skull presents a new model for early ray-fin evolution
Sam Giles, Laurent Darras, Gaël Clément and Matt Friedman
Derived ornithopod dinosaurs: a case of evolutionary parallelism and convergence
David B Norman
Automated generation of large phylogenies and a probabilistically time-scaled 1,000-taxon phylogenetic hypothesis for Mesozoic dinosaurs: dating the origins of flight and crown-birds
Graeme T. Lloyd, David W. Bapst, Katie E. Davis and Matt Friedman
Dinosaur body size maxima driven by global temperature
Roger Benson, Nicolas Campione, Philip Mannion and David Evans
Testing the effect of experimental design on rate and sequence of decay
Duncan J E Murdock, Sarah E Gabbott and Mark A Purnell
Enameloid microstructure in sharks and bony fishes: What do we really know?
Gilles Cuny, Sébastien Enault, Guillaume Guinot and Martha Koot
Long snouted lungfish and the variable dipnoan endocranium
Tom Challands and Alexey Pakhnevich
Chitons of the Permian Capitan Reef, and the nature of late Palaeozoic Polyplacophora
Michael J. Vendrasco, Richard D. Hoare, Jr. Bell and Jonena M. Hearst
A surfeit of sponges: unexpected Ordovician diversity in central Wales, UK
Joseph P. Botting and Lucy A. Muir
Finding food efficiently: the origin and evolution of optimal foraging strategies
Richard J. Twitchett, Andrew M. Reynolds, Nicolas E. Humphries, Emily J. Southall, Victoria J. Wearmouth, Brett Metcalfe and David W. Sims
Cladistic analysis of the enigmatic Polychelidan lobsters
Denis Audo, Sylvain Charbonnier and Jean-Paul Saint Martin
Epibioses of fossil crustaceans: insights on specific palaecoecology and true palaeosymbioses
Ninon Robin, Sylvain Charbonnier, Barry Van Bakel, Sylvain Bernard, Jennyfer Miot and Gilles Petit
A global perspective of the Trigoniida (Bivalvia: Palaeoheterodonta), with a focus on their Mesozoic and Cenozoic representatives
Simon Schneider and Simon R K Kelly
Repeat colonisation of temporary water-bodies by Early Carboniferous invertebrates
Carys Bennett, Peter Brand, Sarah Davies, Tim Kearsey, Dave Millward, Tim Smithson and Mark Williams
Rudist myophores: constructional constraints and phylogenetic informativeness
Peter W. Skelton
Phylogeny of the barnacles – combining molecular and morphological approaches.
Andy Gale
