The Palaeobiology and Biodiversity Research Group (PBRG) uses the fossil record to study the history of life and how ancient organisms lived.

A key focus is on the tree of life, establishing its shape and calibration against geological time scales. We also work on mass extinctions, diversifications, and the links between taxic, morphological, and functional evolution in a range of organisms, from foraminifera to fishes, pteridosperms to pterosaurs. Establishing links between the shape of the history of life and climatic and environmental change is another key field.

The group has pioneered many research and educational initiatives. The Bristol Dinosaur Project focuses research on the Late Triassic prosauropod dinosaur Thecodontosaurus, the oldest plant-eating dinosaur. The work is yielding new information on the early evolution of dinosaurs, and it is the subject of a major open-access educational initiative.

A further key focus is on the origin of major animal groups in the Precambrian and Cambrian - to determine the interaction of palaeontological with molecular and developmental data. Several students and staff work on trace fossils, ancient tracks and burrows, as evidence of ancient behaviour. Others work on the history of biodiversity, the tree of life, mass extinctions, and the relationship between evolution and animal development.

News from the Palaeontology Research Group
		April 2012 - Former MSc student publishes the textbook Steve Brusatte, who completed the MSc in Palaeobiology in Bristol in 2007, and went on to work for his PhD at the American Museum of Natural History, has just published the most authoritative and up-to-date textbook on dinosaurs, with the title Dinosaur Paleobiology. This is the first in a new series of advanced palaeontological books, published worldwide by Wiley-Blackwell, and edited by Mike Benton from the Bristol group. Read more...
		March 2012 - Just so: Scientists name Dorset crocodile after Kipling A superbly preserved 130-million-year-old crocodile skull, discovered at Swanage in Dorset in 2009, has been described as belonging to a species new to science in a paper by researchers at the University of Bristol. The specimen has been given the name Goniopholis kiplingi after Rudyard Kipling, author of The Just So Stories, in recognition of his enthusiasm for the natural sciences. The skull was discovered in April 2009 by Richard Edmonds, Earth Science Manager with the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site Team, in the course of regular site monitoring. Read more...
		March 2012 - Size isn't everything - it's how sharp you are The tiny teeth of a long-extinct vertebrate - with tips only two micrometres across: one twentieth the width of a human hair - are the sharpest dental structures ever measured, new research from the University of Bristol and Monash University, Australia has found. David Jones led a study of conodont function, working with 3D models reconstructed from micro-CT scans, and showed they were the sharpest biological structures ever - they overcome the limitations of their tiny size by achieving exceptional sharpness. Read more...
		March 2012 - The cutting edge: Exploring the efficiency of bladed tooth shape Using a combination of guillotine-based experiments and cutting-edge computer modelling, Phil Anderson and Emily Rayfield, researchers at the University of Bristol have explored the most efficient ways for teeth to slice food. Their results, published today in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, show just how precisely the shape of an animal's teeth is optimized to suit the type of food it eats. Read more...
		March 2012 - The history of ocean acidification Current rates of ocean acidification are unparalleled in Earth's history, according to new research from an international team of scientists which compiled all the evidence of global warming and acidifying oceans from the past 300 million years. Dani Schmidt, a member of the 22-strong team, comments 'Laboratory experiments can tell us about how individual marine organisms react, but the geological record is a real time experiment involving the entire ocean. Read more...
		February 2012 - Public invited to draw the Bristol dinosaur Bristol's own dinosaur, Thecodontosaurus, is now the subject of a competition. The public now have the chance to draw what they think it really looked like as part of an illustration competition run by the Bristol Dinosaur Project at the University of Bristol. Discovered in 1834 near Bristol Zoo, Clifton, the Bristol dinosaur was only the fourth dinosaur ever discovered in the world. Ideas about what the dinosaur looked like are changing all the time as paleontologists find out more about its bones which are held at the University and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. Read more...
		February 2012 - Mouse to elephant? Just wait 24 million generations Scientists have for the first time measured how fast large-scale evolution can occur in mammals, showing it takes 24 million generations for a mouse-sized animal to evolve to the size of an elephant. Research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA describes increases and decreases in mammal body size following the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. An international team, including Dr David Jones of the Bristol Palaeobiology & Biodiversity Research Group, discovered that rates of size decrease are much faster than growth rates. It takes only 100,000 generations for very large decreases, leading to dwarfism, to occur. Read more...
		December 2011 - Chinese fossils shed light on the origin of animals from single-celled ancestors Evidence of the single-celled ancestors of animals has been discovered in 570 million-year-old rocks from South China by researchers from the University of Bristol, the Swedish Museum of Natural History, the Paul Scherrer Institut and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. This X-ray microscopy revealed that the fossils had features that multicellular embryos do not, and this led the researchers to the conclusion that the fossils were neither animals nor embryos but rather the reproductive spore bodies of single-celled ancestors of animals. Read more...
		August 2011 - Rocks and clocks help unravel the mysteries of ancient Earth Research into the dating techniques used to identify the origins of the living world has found that fossils and molecules together are crucial to calibrate the Earth's evolutionary clock. PhD student Rachel Warnock and Profesosr Phil Donoghue show that the shape of the probability distribution of fossils close to a critical calibration point can alter the estimate of age profoundly. Their work points to the need for much greater care in future about constructing estimates of known and missing fossils in dating the tree of life. Read more...
		August 2011 - Getting inside the mind (and up the nose) of our ancient ancestors Reorganisation of the brain and sense organs could be the key to the evolutionary success of vertebrates, one of the great puzzles in evolutionary biology, according to a paper by Gai Zhi-kun, a Bristol PhD student, his supervisor Phil Donoghue, and colleagues, just published in Nature. The study claims to have solved this scientific riddle by studying the brain of a 400 million year old galeaspid, studied using high energy X-rays at the Swiss Light Source. Read more...
		July 2011 - Fossil jaws shed new light on early vertebrate feeding ecology With the evolution of jaws some 420 million years ago, jawed animals diversified rapidly into a range of niches that remained stable for the following 80 million years, despite extinctions, habitat loss and competition, say researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Oxford and Leiden in the leading scientific journal Nature. Bristol researchers Phil Anderson and Emily Rayfield used engineering approaches to jaw form and function to explore the dynamics of early jaw evolution,and the team found that jawed vertebrates surprisingly did not have an obvious or overwhelming advantage over those without jaws. Read more...
		July 2011 - The rise and rise of the flying reptiles Pterosaurs, flying reptiles from the time of the dinosaurs, were not driven to extinction by the birds, but in fact they continued to diversify and innovate for millions of years afterwards. A new study by Katy Prentice, done as part of her undergraduate degree (MSci in Palaeontology and Evolution), shows that the pterosaurs evolved in a most unusual way, becoming more and more specialised through their 160 million years on Earth. The work is published today in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. Read more here and here.
		May 2011 - Reptile 'cousins' shed new light on end-Permian extinction The end-Permian extinction, by far the most dramatic biological crisis to affect life on Earth, may not have been as catastrophic for some creatures as previously thought, according to a new study led by the University of Bristol. The team studied the parareptiles, a diverse group of bizarre-looking terrestrial vertebrates which varied in shape and size. The researchers found that parareptiles were not hit much harder by the end-Permian extinction than at any other point in their 90 million-year history. Read more...
		May 2011 - The sea dragons bounce back The evolution of ichthyosaurs, important marine predators of the age of dinosaurs, was hit hard by a mass extinction event 200 million years ago, according to a new study from the University of Bristol. Ichthyosaurs are iconic fossils, first discovered 200 years ago by Mary Anning on the Jurassic coast of Dorset at Lyme Regis. The new study, published in PNAS, uses numerical methods to explore rates of evolution, diversity, and range of body morphology through the crisis. Read more...
		March 2011 - A night at the museum with the Bristol dinosaur People of all ages will have the opportunity to find out about Bristol's very own dinosaur, Thecodontosaurus, along with meeting experts to learn about Bristol University's current scientific research on fossils and dinosaurs. Dino-nite! has been organised by the Bristol Dinosaur Project, run by the University's School of Earth Sciences, in partnership with Bristol City Museum. Read more...
		January 2011 - Introducing Bentonyx Two Bristol alumni have described a new reptile fossil and named it in honour of their Bristol tutor, Professor Mike Benton. Bentonyx is now an official new genus of rhynchosaur - a group of extinct reptiles that lived around 230 million years ago. Mike commented 'Bentonyx is a squat, pig-shaped animal, with a fat belly, hooked snout, and inane grin, so I can see why they thought of me'. Read more...
		December 2010 - Record number of scientific publications by Bristol MSc students The year 2010 has seen the the largest number of publications by current and former Bristol Palaeobiology Masters students, totalling 20 - one 'public understanding of science' contribution, and 19 scientific papers in journals ranging from Science to Palaeontology, and Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society to Biology Letters. This brings the total of original refereed scientific papers by MSc and MSci students to 81, since the MSc began in 1996. The Bristol Palaeobiology and Biodiversity Research group overall published a total of 80 papers in 2010, of which the contribution by Masters students is 25 percent. Read more...
		December 2010 - Fucheng Zhang visits Bristol as Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor Professor Fucheng Zhang has won a 3-month distinguished visiting professorship position, and is in Bristol from December to March, to continue work on the colour of the feathers of fossil birds and dinosaurs. Fucheng's research interests cover the origin and early evolution of birds and feathers, and the origin of avian flight. His current research themes focus on the description of remarkable new bird fossils, including skeletons with feathers and skin, as well as eggs, and other fossils from the astonishing Early Cretaceous fossil deposits of the Jehol Group in NE China. Read more...
		December 2010 - New fossil site in China shows long recovery from the largest mass extinction A major new fossil site in south-west China has filled in a sizeable gap in our understanding of how life on this planet recovered from the greatest mass extinction of all time, according to a paper co-authored by Professor Mike Benton, in the School of Earth Sciences, and published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The work is led by scientists from the Chengdu Geological Center in China. The new site, at Luoping in Yunnan Province, has yielded 20,000 fossils, including some of the first reptiles, indicating the first emergence of a full ecosystem, some 10 million years after the end-Permian mass extinction.Read more....
		November 2010 - Rainforest collapse drove reptile evolution Global warming devastated tropical rainforests, 300 million years ago. Now, Bristol palaeontologists Sarda Sahney, Howard Falcon-Lang (also Royal Holloway) and Mike Benton report the unexpected discovery that this event triggered an evolutionary burst amongst reptiles - and inadvertently paved the way for the rise of dinosaurs, a hundred million years later. This event happened 305 Myr ago, during the Carboniferous Period. At that time, Europe and North America lay on the equator and were covered by steamy tropical rainforests. But when the Earth's climate became hotter and drier, rainforests collapsed, triggering reptile evolution. Read more....
		November 2010 - Engineer provides new insight into pterosaur flight Colin Palmer, an engineer turned palaeobiology PhD student at Bristol has now shown that pterosaurs were slower flyers than had been assumed. By a combination of model testing and numerical calculations, he has shown that these ancient flying reptiles were significantly less aerodynamically efficient and were capable of flying at lower speeds than previously thought. This meant they could land at slower speeds than had been thought, and so explains why they did not break their fragile bones more often. Read more....
		November 2010 - Student wins mineralized tissue prize Duncan Murdock, a current third year PhD palaeobiology student, has received the 'Young Investigator Award' at the 10th International Conference on the Chemistry and Biology of Mineralized Tissues in Arizona for his paper on the 'Evolutionary origins of animal skeletons'. Read more....
		November 2010 - New prize announced for best MSc thesis A new prize for the best project from students enrolled for the MSc in Palaeobiology, to be called the David Dineley Prize, has been launched. The first award will be made in early 2011, for the best MSc thesis in the 2009-2010 cohort, as judged by the teaching staff and the external examiner for the programme. Read more....
		October 2010 - 'Junk DNA' uncovers the nature of our ancient ancestors The key to solving one of the great puzzles in evolutionary biology, the origin of vertebrates, has been revealed in new research from Dartmouth College (USA) and the University of Bristol. Phil Donoghue and colleagues show, in a study of micro RNAs, that lamprey and hagfish form a clade Cyclostomata, and they are both equally related to the jawed vertebrates - previous orthodoxy had been that the hagfish was closer to gnathostomes. The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Read more in the Nature news report.
		September 2010 - Top dinosaur hunters are worst at naming The more fossil species you describe, the less likely the names are to stick. Edward Cope (left) named 64 dinosaur species, but only 9 of his names are still in use. This is as true of prolific dinosaur namers in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In a study of all 321 authors who have named one or more dinosaur species, the most successful were those who named only one, as reported in a new paper in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology by Mike Benton. Read more in the Nature news report.
		August 2010 - Evolution rewritten again and again Palaeontologists are forever claiming that their latest fossil discovery will 'rewrite evolutionary history'. Is this just boasting or is our 'knowledge' of evolution so feeble that it changes every time we find a new fossil? A team of researchers at the University of Bristol decided to find out, with investigations of dinosaur and human evolution. Their study suggests most fossil discoveries do not make a huge difference, confirming, not contradicting our understanding of evolutionary history. Read more here, and on the Nature and Discover websites.
		July 2010 - Ancient reptiles 'make tracks' A new discovery of 318 million-year-old fossilised footprints from Eastern Canada reveals when reptiles first conquered dry land. The footprints were discovered by Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, when he was on the staff of this department, and were studied in collaboration with Mike Benton. They show key features of the amniotes, reptiles and their descendants, and are older than the oldest amniote skeletal fossils. Read more here.
		June 2010 - First analysis of theropod biting diversity A study comparing how carnivorous dinosaurs tore through their meat has found meat eaters munched using at least four distinct biting methods. The findings, by Dr Manabu Sakamoto, a postdoc at the University of Bristol, appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Sakamoto compared 41 species of theropods, and used biomechanical models to identify the four feeding modes. Read more here and here.
		May 2010 - MSc student wins prize for thesis Nick Crumpton, who completed the MSc in Palaeobiology in Bristol in September 2009, has just been awarded the Geologists' Association prize for one of the best earth sciences Masters theses in the UK in 2009. Nick worked on adaptation and morphometrics of the teeth of tiny Triassic and Jurassic mammals, and the prize was awarded for his application of innovative numerical imaging techniques and comparisons with analogous extant forms. Read more...
		April 2010 - Former MSc students get permanent palaeontology positions Former students of the Bristol MSc have achieved excellent careers in palaeontology - in museums, universities, publishing, and the media. We normally do not highlight their new posts, but keep a list of current jobs of former students where we can. Three have recently secured permanent positions - Isla Gladstone, as the new Curator of Natural Sciences at the Yorkshire Museum in York, Tai Kubo as Curator at the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Japan, and Phil Hopley as Lecturer in Palaeoclimatology at Birkbeck College, University of London. Many congratulations to them all!
		March 2010 - JESBI funding The 'Jurassic Ecosystem of Strawberry Bank, Ilminster' project was launched on 25th March, with generous funding from the Esmée Fairburn Foundation. The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution's museum holds a unique spectacular collection of exceptionally preserved fossils from the late Lias of Ilminster, Somerset, that show exquisite 3-dimensional detail, and many have soft tissues. The funding supports essential curatorial work at the BRLSI and development of a substantial new research programme by Bristol MSc students. Read more...
		February 2010 - Island of dwarf dinosaurs The idea of dwarf dinosaurs on Haţeg Island, Romania, was proposed 100 years ago by the colourful Baron Franz Nopcsa, whose family owned estates in the area. He realized that many of the Haţeg dinosaurs had close relatives in older rocks in England, Germany, and North America, but the Romanian specimens were half the size. In new work by Mike Benton at the University of Bristol, and six other authors from Romania, Germany, and the United States, Nopcsa's hypothesis is tested for the first time, using numerical methods and bone histology. Read more...
		February 2010 - Humble algae are the key to whale evolution Diatoms, a form of planktonic algae, have been key to the evolution of the diversity of whales, according to a new study. The research by Felix Marx of the University of Otago in New Zealand and Dr Mark Uhen of George Mason University in the US is published today in the journal Science. The fossil record shows that diatoms and whales rose and fell in diversity together. Whales do not eat diatoms, but the giant baleen whales feed on krill, small crustaceans that themselves feed on diatoms. Felix began this project while completing his MSci project in Bristol, and his PhD research is jointly between the University of Otago and University of Bristol. Read more...
		February 2010 - Ocean acidification is at fastest rate in 65 million years A new model, capable of assessing the rate at which the oceans are acidifying, suggests that changes in the carbonate chemistry of the deep ocean may exceed anything seen in the past 65 million years. The research, by Dr Andy Ridgwell (Geographical Sciences) and Dr Daniela Schmidt (Earth Sciences) also predicts much higher rates of environmental change at the ocean's surface, potentially exceeding the rate at which plankton can adapt. The work is based on studies of plankton extinction through the past 100 Myr, with a focus on the PETM. Read more...
		January 2010 - Melanosomes in dinosaur feathers show their original colour The colour of some feathers on dinosaurs and early birds has been identified for the first time, reports a paper published in Nature this week. For example, the theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx had simple bristles - precursors of feathers - in alternate orange and white rings down its tail, and the early bird Confuciusornis had patches of white, black, and orange-brown colouring. Read more... See and hear Mike Benton rambling on about the discovery, and read the interpretive web pages.
		December 2009 - Another bumper year for publications by Bristol palaeontologists The Bristol Palaeobiology & Biodiversity Research Group published 64 papers in refereed scientific journals throughout 2009, of which 11 were by current and former MSc and MSci students, 17 percent of the group total. In addition, members of the group published two books, including the major new textbook, Introduction to Paleobiology and the Fossil Record, and other review and popular articles. Read more...
		December 2009 - New research resolves mystery about pterosaur flight Did the pterosaurian pteroid point forward or inward? The pteroid is a modified wrist bone that had a role in supporting the propatagium, the front wing segment. A new study by Colin Palmer, a PhD student in the Department, and Gareth Dyke, a Senior Lecturer at University College Dublin (and a former Bristol student) show that the pteroid could not have pointed forward, and that it had a more subtle role in varying the dimensions of the propatagium. Read more...
		November 2009 - Britain's oldest dinosaur to be released After 210 million years of being entombed in rock, the Bristol Dinosaur is about to be released, thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant of 295,000 awarded to the University of Bristol. The funding will pay for a preparator, who will work to extract the bones from the rock, and an Education Officer, who will coordinate engagement activities with the citizens of Bristol and region, both young and old. Read more...
		October 2009 - Why giant sea scorpions got so big Palaeozoic eurypterids were remarkable for their huge size. It had been thought that these predators became ever larger in an 'arms race' with their prey, the heavily armnoured fishes, or that their size increase was enabled by extra-high levels of oxygen in the atmosphere at the time. New work by MSc student James Lamsdell and Dr Simon Braddy shows that both views are correct: one eurypterid lineage became large to prey on the armoured fishes, and the other because of enhanced oxygen. The work is published today in Biology Letters. Read more...
		September 2009 - More than 1100 vertebrate palaeontologists in Bristol Over 1,100 paleontologists from all over the world arrived in Bristol this week for an international conference at the University of Bristol. For the first time since its foundation in 1940, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) is holding its annual meeting outside the Americas. The meeting was widely reported in the press, as was the inspirational lecture by Sir David Attenborough about Wallace, darwin, and the birds of paradise. Hot topic of the week was the announcement on Friday of the new Jurassic dinosaur Anchiornis, the oldest feathered animal yet reported, 5 to 10 million years older than Archaeopteryx.
		September 2009 - Fossil water scorpion was ancestor of giant sweep-feeders New finds of a fossil water scorpion that lived in rivers around Bristol some 370 Million years ago have shown Bristol palaeontologists what the animal looked like and how it was related to other eurypterids. Work by Dr Simon Braddy and James Lamsdell from Bristol

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