Anatomy and Adaptations of Early Eocene Mammals from Wyoming

怀俄明州的Bighorn盆地有一个始新世的富含化石的沉积序列。它产生了非常密集的脊椎动物化石记录，其中大部分是牙齿、颌骨，或者更罕见的是头骨。这就留下了一个悬而未决的问题，即这些哺乳动物是如何在生态上发挥作用的(主要问题是运动)。始新世是现代脊椎动物家族分化的时间间隔，因此更好地了解它们的运动将特别有价值。肯尼思·罗斯博士多年来一直致力于制作详细的化石收藏，以记录这些进化事件。他建议继续努力收集新的颅后遗骸，并使用这些和现有的收集来分析功能和行为。罗斯博士将使用最新的方法来研究骨骼化石的形状和功能，包括基于微型计算机的图像分析，以及与现存哺乳动物的统计比较。这项拟议的研究将吸引对始新世感兴趣的脊椎动物古生物学家以外的观众。哺乳动物学家和功能形态学家将对哺乳动物家族的早期功能谱有新的见解，进化生物学家将对辐射家族中新的功能复合体产生的过程感兴趣。

The Bighorn Basin of Wyoming has a richly fossiliferous sedimentary sequence of Eocene age. It has yielded an extraordinarily dense record of vertebrate fossils, most of which are teeth, jaws, or more rarely, skulls. This has left open the question of how the these mammals functioned ecologically (locomotion being the primary question). The Eocene was a time interval in which the modern families of vertebrates were becoming differentiated, so a better understanding of their locomotion would be particularly valuable. Dr. Kenneth Rose has devoted years of effort to making detailed fossil collections that document these evolutionary events. He proposes to continue his efforts to collect new post-cranial remains, and to use these and existing collections in an analysis of function and behavior. Dr. Rose will use the most current approaches to studying the shapes and functions of fossil bone, including microcomputer- based image analysis as well as statistical comparisons with living mammals. The proposed research will attract an audience beyond vertebrate paleontologists interested in the Eocene. Mammalogists and functional morphologists will gain new insight into the early functional repertoire of mammalian families, and evolutionary biologists will take interest in the process by which new functional complexes arise in radiating families.