The earliest exploration of land by animals: from trace fossils to numerical analyses

动物对陆地的最早探索：从痕迹化石到数值分析

• 批准号: EP/Z000920/1
• 负责人: Imran Rahman
• 金额: $ 24.5万
• 依托单位: Natural History Museum
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2025
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2025 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FZ000920%2F1
• 关键词: earliest; exploration; land; animals; trace

This proposal aims to address an important long-standing palaeontological question concerning the timing and nature of the animals who undertook the earliest explorations on land in Earth's history. The main focus of this proposal is to use trace fossils, combined with cutting-edge theoretical and numerical approaches, to identify the earliest traces left by the movement of animals on land, to determine their putative trace makers, and to establish their mobility and sensory capabilities. This work will involve integrating concepts and methods from mathematics and computational mechanics with palaeontological and sedimentological approaches, thereby establishing a new quantitative ichnological framework. To achieve this I will: (1) use statistical approaches to establish a set of metrics that can quantitatively identify the producer of trace fossils; (2) establish a semi-resolved coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics-Discrete Element Method to reproduce trace formation on land, under water and on microbial mats; (3) conduct a dimensional analysis to find out the scaling law relating trace fossil instability (an indicator of terrestrial traces), animal mobility and environmental parameters; and finally (4) use the obtained scaling law to investigate putative terrestrial traces from the Ediacaran and Cambrian periods. This project will enhance research in the area of quantitative ichnology, with broad implications in the Earth sciences, evolutionary biology and ethology. This project will enable me to develop as an independent interdisciplinary researcher working across palaeontology, computational mechanics and evolutionary biology, ultimately allowing me to establish my own international research team.

该提议旨在解决一个重要的长期古生物学问题，该问题涉及动物的时机和性质，他们在地球历史上进行了最早的土地探索。该提案的主要重点是使用痕量化石，再加上最先进的理论和数值方法，以确定动物在陆地上移动留下的最早痕迹，以确定其推定的微量制造商，并确定其活动性和感觉能力。这项工作将涉及将数学和计算力学中的概念和方法与古生物学和沉积学方法相结合，从而建立了新的定量性化学框架。为了实现这一目标，我将：（1）使用统计方法来建立一组可以定量识别痕量化石的生产者的指标； （2）建立一种半分辨的耦合计算流体动力学元素方法，以在水下，水和微生物垫上重现痕量形成； （3）进行维度分析，以找出与痕量化石不稳定性（陆地痕迹的指标），动物迁移率和环境参数有关的缩放定律；最后（4）使用获得的缩放定律来研究Ediacaran和Cambrian时期的假定陆地痕迹。该项目将增强定量鱼类学领域的研究，对地球科学，进化生物学和伦理学具有广泛的影响。该项目将使我能够发展为一名独立的跨学科研究人员，跨古生物学，计算力学和进化生物学，最终使我能够建立自己的国际研究团队。