PROJECT DETAILS ONLY - NO DATA. The incredible success of living birds (>9000 species) results, in part, from their unique respiratory system, which underpins the key evolutionary innovations of high metabolism and flight. This system comprises the lungs and a complex array of interconnected air sacs. The air sacs allow a unidirectional flow of air through the lungs, permitting exceptionally efficient gas-exchange. Extensions from the air sacs penetrate and pneumatize nearby bones, including vertebrae and limb elements, with the associated effect of reducing skeletal mass. In contrast, the closest living relatives of birds, crocodiles, lack air sacs and corresponding pneumatic features. There is now overwhelming evidence that birds are direct descendents of theropod dinosaurs. Many features previously regarded as uniquely avian appeared first among dinosaurs (e.g. feathers, brooding behaviour). The avian air sac system is another such feature: its presence in theropod and sauropod dinosaurs (and pterosaurs) has been inferred on the basis of pneumatic features in vertebrae that are almost identical to those seen in living birds. However, the origin of the air sac system is poorly understood: there is no consensus on whether air sacs and pneumaticity were present in the common ancestor of theropods, sauropods and pterosaurs, or whether they evolved independently in these three groups. Furthermore, possible evidence of pneumaticity has recently been identified in more distantly related Triassic archosaurs, prompting the controversial hypothesis that pneumaticity (and, by inference, air sacs and some bird-like respiratory capabilities) may have been present in the last common ancestor of birds and crocodiles, and subsequently lost in crocodilians. If true, this would require radical alteration of our understanding of the remarkable biology of birds and crocodiles and how they evolved. Understanding the origin of the avian respiratory system is clearly fundamental to explaining the success and diversity of the various archosaur lineages. However, the main alternative hypotheses have not yet been tested. We propose a pilot study to test alternative hypotheses explaining the origin of bird-like respiration. This work is timely, given recent intensive interest in dinosaur and bird respiratory systems, the availability of the research team and a new micro X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) facility at the Natural History Museum. We will determine the presence/absence of pneumatic structures in the vertebrae of selected Triassic archosaurs that lie close to the common ancestry of crocodiles and birds. The identification of pneumaticity will be based on external and internal vertebral anatomy: the latter data were previously unavailable, but will be obtained using CT scans - an entirely novel approach to this problem. The extent of pneumaticity, both within individual bones and throughout the skeleton, will be documented and the distribution of pneumatic structures will be determined by mapping the presence/absence of these features onto current archosaur evolutionary trees. This will permit us to establish: when pneumaticity appeared in archosaurs; whether the acquisition (or loss) of pneumaticity was a single event or occurred on multiple independent occasions; and the evolutionary sequence in which the different components of the air sac system appeared. Demonstrating the absence of pneumaticity in basal archosaurs would falsify hypotheses that a bird-like respiratory system was present in the ancestral archosaur, and support alternative hypotheses suggesting a later origin of air sacs. However, if pneumaticity is identified in primitive archosaurs this project will demonstrate that evolution of the air sac system is more complex than currently assumed and will facilitate future investigations into the origins of avian and crocodilian respiratory systems.

This dataset contains laser scan data of Ediacaran fossils from Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve and Discovery Geopark, Newfoundland, Canada and from casts of Ediacaran fossil surfaces housed in the Sedgwick Museum, University of Cambridge, UK. These data were collected across two weeks in August 2024 using a Faro Quantum Scan Arm with a v6 laser-line probe. The data comes from 2 sites in Mistaken Point: D surface has 32 scans, 11.5GB and Gully G surface with 38 scans, 145Gb. There was data from 5 surfaces in the Discovery Geopark: CT7 had 9 scans, 28.3Gb, Mel15 had 7 scans of 11.5GB, Sandy Point had 13 scans of 42Gb and from casts there were 33 scans of MUN surface (110Gb) and 36 scans of H5 (115GB). These data will be used to reconstruct the community ecology using spatial point process analyses and Bayesian network inference. This data set is part of an project to understand the eco-evolutionary dynamics of early animal communities.

Supporting data from paper: Hill et al. 2019 Evolution of jaw disparity in fishes. Palaeontology 61: 847-854. The data consists of two files: (1) an Excel spreadsheet listing the taxa used in the study, specimen number, clade, age; (2) a Word document outlining the data collection and analysis procedure used in the study.

Data derived from NERC Grant NE/J022632/1, Sequence alignments and resulting phylogenetic hypotheses from Harrington et al. (2016) BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Phylogenetic data matrices used to assess the differences between hard and soft morphological characters For more details see: Fossilization causes organisms to appear erroneously primitive by distorting evolutionary trees Robert S. Sansom & Matthew A. Wills Scientific Reports 3, Article number: 2545 (2013) doi:10.1038/srep02545

This dataset contains three dimensional synchrotron x-ray tomographic (SRXTM) datasets and analyses of nuclei and nucleoli in embryo-like fossils from the Ediacaran Weng'an Biota. The data accompanies the following paper: Yin Z, Cunningham JA, Vargas K, Bengtson S, Zhu M, Donoghue PCJ. 2017. Nuclei and nucleoli in embryo-like fossils from the Ediacaran Weng'an Biota. Precambrian Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.precamres.2017.08.009 Each .7z archive zip file contains the data relating to a single specimen.

Results files from computer simulations of fluid flow for 3D models of Ediacaran organisms and communities, generated using computational fluid dynamics. Simulations performed using the simulation software package COMSOL Multiphysics. Root folder names refer to initial trials ‘Cylinder Tests’), modern organisms (‘Chondrocladia lyra’), Ediacaran organisms (‘Pectinifrons’ and ‘Pterdinium’), and Ediacaran surfaces (‘Avalon’ and ‘White Sea’ surfaces). Sub-folder and file names refer to simulations performed with different models (e.g., ‘Base’, ‘Filled’ and ‘Flush’ Petridinium models), model orientations (e.g., 0°, 90°, and 180° to the inlet), current velocities (e.g., 0.15, 0.5 and 0.85 m/s), and turbulence models (e.g., Spalart Allmaras, shear stress transport, and large eddy simulation). Further details for Pectinifrons and Pteridinium available in Darroch et al. 2022 (https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2022.2) and Darroch et al. 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.105989), respectively. Files can be opened with COMSOL Multiphysics (www.comsol.com) versions 5.6 or 6.0 and above.

PROJECT DETAILS ONLY - NO DATA. Tuberculosis (TB) is a reemerging infection that was also common in the past in Britain. Poverty, drug resistance, the HIV, and migration are key factors in its occurrence today. The disease can be caused by any one of five related bacteria known as the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. In Britain the two most likely candidates are Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis. M. bovis can infect many different animals, including cows, and humans were often infected by drinking milk, which is why it is pasteurised in Britain. Today, most TB infections occur in the lungs, because it is transmitted via coughing, but other parts of the body can also be infected, especially if the disease is caught by eating or drinking infected foods. If left untreated the infection can cause damage to different bones in the body, most commonly the spine, ribs, hips and knees. Archaeologists have used this information to study TB in the past, but visual examination of skeletons does not reveal which bacterium has caused the infection, nor which strain of either species is present. We would like to be able identify species and strains because this would enable us to trace the origin of TB in Britain. We think TB came to Britain from the Mediterranean region but to confirm this idea we would have to compare the particular strain present in early British skeletons with that in bones from southern Europe. Similarly, we believe that there were changes in the frequencies of different strains of Mycobacterium over time, and these changes were possibly influenced by factors such as immigration, changes in population density, and changes in the environment. There are also interesting questions about the evolution of TB in the New World after contact with Europeans. All of these questions could be addressed if we could identify the particular strains of Mycobacterium in skeletons from different places and different time periods. Until recently, this was impossible, but now there are techniques for studying the small amounts of 'ancient' DNA that are preserved in some archaeological skeletons. We will therefore extract ancient DNA from a variety of skeletons that show the bone changes associated with TB, and use DNA sequencing to determine which Mycobacterium strain is present in each case. The proposed project will carry out this work with skeletons from Britain and Europe. Our Project Partners in Arizona State University are doing similar work with bones from North America, and by comparing our two sets of results we will be able to study the impact that Contact had on TB in the New World.