PhD Studentship: Making Sense of Early Vertebrates

The acquisition of a head and its associated sense organs by vertebrates over 500 Ma (million years ago) was one of the major transitions in animal evolution, and is thought to have contributed to the dominance of vertebrates in modern-day ecosystems. This precaudal head’s sense organs include structures for sensing light (eyes/pineal), chemicals (nose), orientation (inner ear), and pressure and vibration (sensory lines). In living vertebrates the development and anatomy of these sense organs is complex and reflects a vast span of phylogenetic, developmental and ecophenotypic evolution. This means that living vertebrates offer a diverse array of placements of sense organs that are somewhat divorced from their origins.   

The Palaeozoic fossil record of early skeletonising vertebrates provide a potential cipher by revealing cranial organisation at an early point in time close to the origin of the ‘new head’. Within the ‘ostracoderms’, a loosely defined group of jawless fish that dominate the vertebrate fossil record from the middle Ordovician to the end of the Devonian (approximately 470 to 360 Ma), sensory structures and the brain create distinctive hard tissue signatures that permit their identification in fossil specimens. Using high resolution 3d datasets, the project will look to build schematic models for the distribution of these structures with an aim to reconstruct the ancestral states (e.g. eyes anterior, lateral or dorsal, pineal paired or single) across early vertebrates and assess the evolution of vertebrate sense organs over time.  

For further information on this project and details of how to apply to it please click on the above 'Apply' button

Further information on how to apply for a CENTA studentship can be found on the CENTA website: https://centa.ac.uk/

This project is offered through the CENTA3 DTP, with funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Funding covers an annual stipend, tuition fees (at home-fee level) and Research Training Support Grant.

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