ERC Starting Grant · 2017
The Rise of Placental Mammals: Dissecting an Evolutionary Radiation
Mammals are ubiquitous, with over 5000 species across the globe. But how did mammals become so successful? There is vigorous debate among palaeontologists: did mammals explosively diversify after a sudden environmental crisis knocked out dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous (~66 million years ago) or rise to dominance more slowly, alongside the dinosaurs? The debate persists because we still know very little about those mammals that flourished during the ~10 million years after the end-Cretaceous extinction (the early Paleogene), as they are largely ignored because their ‘archaic’ anatomy has long confounded palaeontologists. This project will use a wealth of newly discovered fossils and…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.