EAPSI: The Anatomy and Evolutionary Relationships of Klamelisaurus Gobiensis and Other Sauropod Dinosaurs of the Middle and Late Jurassic of China

EAPSI：中国中侏罗世中晚期戈壁克拉梅龙与其他蜥脚类恐龙的解剖结构和进化关系

• 批准号: 1515288
• 负责人: Andrew Moore
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Moore Andrew J
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-01 至 2016-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1515288&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAPSI; Anatomy; Evolutionary; Relationships; Klamelisaurus

Sauropod dinosaurs are the largest terrestrial animals ever to have lived. The sauropod body plan--characterized by elongated necks, massive bodies, and air-filled bones--emerged in the Middle and Late Jurassic, some evolving neck lengths exceeding nine meters. It is not known how and why body forms evolve. So far, no fewer than twenty sauropods from the Middle and Late Jurassic of China were found. Yet most remain to be studied. Through collaboration with Dr. Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, an international authority on dinosaur evolution, this project will exhaustively document the anatomy of Klamelisaurus gobiensis, an understudied sauropod from the Middle-Late Jurassic of China. New anatomical data from Klamelisaurus and other Chinese sauropods will be used to produce a revised hypothesis of sauropod evolutionary relationships and illuminate the mechanisms by which long necks evolved.The holotype of Klamelisaurus gobiensis preserves a largely complete postcranial skeleton. The researcher will spend a significant portion of the EAPSI program producing a monographic anatomical description of Klamelisaurus. In addition, the researcher will reassess sauropod evolutionary relationships with a large morphological character matrix that includes numerous Chinese sauropods that have never been included in such an analysis, specifically addressing the hypothesis that Klamelisaurus is an early member of the exceptionally long-necked Omeisauridae. Phylogenetic analyses will be performed under both maximum parsimony and Bayesian posterior probability optimality criteria in the programs TNT and BEAST. The resulting evolutionary trees will be used to statistically test the likelihood of different evolutionary hypotheses regarding neck elongation, e.g., air space increases in anterior cervical vertebrae prior to the cervicalization of dorsal vertebrae. This NSF EAPSI award supports the research of a U.S. graduate student and is funded in collaboration with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

蜥脚类恐龙是有史以来最大的陆生动物。蜥脚类恐龙的身体结构出现于侏罗纪中后期，其特征是细长的颈部、巨大的身体和充满空气的骨骼，有些进化后的颈部长度超过了九米。目前尚不清楚身体形态如何以及为何进化。 迄今为止，中国侏罗纪中晚期的蜥脚类恐龙已发现不少于20种。但大多数仍有待研究。 通过与国际恐龙进化权威古脊椎动物与古人类研究所的徐星博士合作，该项目将详尽记录戈壁克拉梅龙的解剖结构，戈壁克拉梅龙是一种来自中国中晚侏罗世的蜥脚类恐龙。来自克拉梅龙和其他中国蜥脚类恐龙的新解剖数据将用于提出蜥脚类恐龙进化关系的修正假说，并阐明长脖子进化的机制。戈壁克拉梅龙的正模保存了基本完整的颅后骨骼。研究人员将花费 EAPSI 计划的大部分时间来制作克拉梅龙的专题解剖学描述。此外，研究人员将通过一个大型形态特征矩阵重新评估蜥脚类恐龙的进化关系，其中包括许多从未被纳入此类分析的中国蜥脚类恐龙，特别是提出克拉梅利龙是超长颈峨眉龙科的早期成员的假设。系统发育分析将在 TNT 和 BEAST 程序中根据最大简约性和贝叶斯后验概率最优标准进行。由此产生的进化树将用于统计测试有关颈部伸长的不同进化假设的可能性，例如，在背椎颈化之前颈椎前部的空气空间增加。该 NSF EAPSI 奖项支持美国研究生的研究，并由与中国科学技术部合作资助。