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.

这一提议旨在解决一个重要的长期存在的古生物学问题，即在地球历史上最早探索陆地的动物的时间和性质。本研究的重点是利用化石痕迹，结合前沿的理论和数值方法，识别动物在陆地上运动留下的最早的痕迹，确定它们可能的痕迹制造者，并建立它们的移动能力和感官能力。这项工作将涉及将数学和计算力学的概念和方法与古生物学和沉积学方法相结合，从而建立一个新的定量技术框架。为了实现这一目标，我将：(1)使用统计方法建立一套可以定量识别痕迹化石生产者的指标；(2)建立半分辨耦合计算流体动力学-离散元方法，再现陆地、水下和微生物席上的微量地层；(3)进行量纲分析，找出痕迹化石不稳定性（陆地痕迹指标）、动物流动性与环境参数之间的标度规律；最后(4)利用得到的标度律对埃迪卡拉纪和寒武纪假定的陆地痕迹进行研究。这个项目将加强定量技术领域的研究，在地球科学、进化生物学和动物行为学方面具有广泛的影响。这个项目将使我成为一名独立的跨学科研究人员，从事古生物学、计算力学和进化生物学的研究，并最终建立自己的国际研究团队。