Collaborative Research: Cretaceous Mammals From Mongolia and Mammalian Higher-Level Phylogeny

合作研究：蒙古白垩纪哺乳动物和哺乳动物高级系统发育

• 批准号: 9625431
• 负责人: John Wible
• 金额: $ 9万
• 依托单位: University of Louisville Research Foundation Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-03-01 至 1998-11-09
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9625431&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Cretaceous; Mammals; Mongolia

9625431 Wible Since the famous fossil-collecting expeditions to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia in the 1920s, scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and their colleagues have continued an outstanding tradition of research on Cretaceous-age dinosaurs, birds, and mammals. Fossil collections resumed recently with Mongolian and Chinese collaborators, and these new expeditions are yielding abundant specimens of both known and entirely new groups (taxa) of dinosaurs and early dinosaur-like mammals. Material includes exquisitely preserved skulls and skeletons of multituberculates and taxa considered to belong to basal groups of placental mammals. Study of this material will provide new evidence bearing on taxonomic diversity and phylogenetic (evolutionary) relationships of early mammal-like reptiles and of the early lineages of true mammals. New characters from dentition, skull, and postcranial skeletons will be amassed using traditional paleontological techniques as well as new CT (computer-aided tomography) scanning of specimens, which avoids destructive sampling. AMNH scientists in association with colleagues at University of Louisville and abroad are working to integrate the new knowledge of taxa and of characters from these early fossil mammals with knowledge from known fossil and extant groups, and in turn to compare their results with data from molecular (DNA) studies of living taxa. In particular, well-documented fossil species will provide calibration points for theoretical studies of molecular evolutionary rates. And the eventual integration of morphological and molecular evidence should provide robust estimates of evolutionary history for the early lineages of mammals and their close relatives.

9625431自著名的化石收集探险以来，1920年代蒙古戈比沙漠，美国自然历史博物馆及其同事的科学家一直延续了关于白垩纪恐龙，鸟类，鸟类和哺乳动物的杰出研究传统。最近与蒙古和中国合作者一起恢复了化石收藏品，这些新探险公司在恐龙和早期类似恐龙的哺乳动物的已知和全新群体（分类）中产生了丰富的标本。材料包括精美保存的头骨以及被认为属于胎盘哺乳动物基底群的多结核分类群和分类单元的骨骼。对该材料的研究将提供有关分类学多样性和系统发育（进化）关系的新证据，与哺乳动物早期的爬行动物和真正哺乳动物的早期谱系有关。牙列，头骨和颅后骨骼的新角色将使用传统的古生物学技术以及对标本的新CT（计算机辅助断层扫描）进行扫描，从而避免破坏性抽样。 与路易斯维尔大学和国外的同事联合的AMNH科学家正在努力将这些早期化石哺乳动物的新知识和人物的新知识与已知化石和现存群体的知识相结合，然后将其结果与分子研究（DNA）的数据进行比较。特别是有据可查的化石物种将为分子进化率的理论研究提供校准点。形态和分子证据的最终整合应为哺乳动物及其近亲的早期谱系的进化史提供可靠的估计。