Design of the cardiovascular system of living and fossil vertebrates

该项目旨在了解哺乳动物、鸟类、爬行动物和鱼类的心脏和血管是如何进化以实现效率的。心脏是生命中最重要的器官。该项目将研究脊椎动物中空和海绵状心脏的结构和功能，以展示能量学如何塑造它们的进化。它将测量骨骼中的动脉孔，以测量大脑和骨骼的新陈代谢，这开辟了一种直接从化石中测量灭绝动物新陈代谢的新方法，而不是从活着的亲戚那里推断。预期结果是将心血管设计与器官代谢率相关联。

This project aims to understand how the heart and blood vessels evolved in mammals, birds, reptiles and fish to achieve efficiency. The heart is the most important organ for life. The project will study the structure and function of vertebrate animals’ hollow and spongy hearts to show how energetics shaped their evolution. It will measure arterial holes in bone to gauge brain and bone metabolism, which opens up a new way to measure metabolism in extinct animals directly from fossils, rather than by inference from living relatives. The expected outcome is to correlate cardiovascular design and metabolic rates of organs.