PRF/M: Systematic and Functional Analyses of Enamel Microstructure of Early Eutherian Mammals

在标志着白垩纪末期的大灭绝之前和之后，真兽（胎盘）哺乳动物经历了一次主要的进化辐射。对这些哺乳动物的系统分析，基于它们的牙齿形态（可用于分析的主要特征），既没有完全澄清它们的系统发育相互关系，也没有理解导致辐射的适应性（功能）差异。学习和应用哺乳动物牙釉质微观结构分析所涉及的技术将提供一套额外的特征，可以用来解决这些问题和研究技术，可以传递给研究生谁在他们的研究中面临类似的问题。在1990-1991学年休年假，并邀请到波恩大学古生物研究所所长怀特特·冯·科尼格斯瓦尔德教授的实验室工作。将提供一个新的研究环境，时间来学习新的研究技术，并有机会采取新的方法来研究真兽哺乳动物早期辐射的模式和因果因素。

Just prior to and immediately after the mass extinctions used to mark the end of the Cretaceous eutherian (placental) mammals underwent a major evolutionary radiation. Systematic analyses of these mammals, based on their gross dental morphology (the primary suite of characters available for analysis), have resulted in neither full clarification of their phylogenetic interrelationships nor in understanding of the adaptive (functional) differences that contributed to the radiation. Learning and applying the techniques involved in analysis of the microstructure of mammalian enamel will provide an additional suite of characters that can be used to address these problems and research techniques that can be passed on to graduate students who are faced with similar problems in their research. A sabbatical leave during the academic year 1990-1991 and an invitation to work in the laboratory of Professor Dr. Wighart von Koenigswald, Director of the Palaontologisches Institut der Universitat Bonn (BRD). will provide a new research environment, time to learn new research techniques and the opportunity to take a fresh approach to research on the patterns and causal factors of the early radiation of eutherian mammals.