Reassessment of Late Jurassic elasmobranch fishes of Europe

The goal of the current project is to analyze the early evolution of sharks and rays, the so-called Elasmobranchii from some of the most famous palaeontological sites of the world, including Solnhofen and Nusplingen in Germany and Cerin and Canjures in France, which are of Late Jurassic age (ca. 152 million years old). These fossil elasmobranchs represent an ideal case study to analyze the morphology, relationships and ecological structures of marine communities in the past since this fauna is predominantly represented by articulated skeletons and dates back to shortly before the Late Jurassic - Early Cretaceous extinction event, corresponding to a period of profound global changes. Although several studies contributed to our knowledge of the biotic diversity of these paleontological sites in the last 150 years, elasmobranch fishes have been largely ignored in palaeobiological studies employing modern, state-of-art methodological approaches so far. This project will focus on the following major questions: (1) What is the taxonomic composition of elasmobranch fish assemblages of the Late Jurassic European Lagerstätten? (2) What are their phylogenetic relationships with living and fossil representatives? (3) What are the faunal relationships and similarities of the Late Jurassic elasmobranch fishes of S Germany and France with other coeval assemblages? To answer these questions we will employ a multidisciplinary approach. Morphological studies of these elasmobranch fishes will be the starting point of the project. Subsequently, modern morphological and molecular methods within an evolutionary framework employing sophisticated statistical approaches will allow us to reconstruct evolutionary dynamics, in order to better understand elasmobranch palaeobiological patterns. Consequently, this project will improve our understanding about the evolutionary history of one of the most significant aquatic vertebrate groups in deep-time, which are mostly top predators in marine food webs, the elasmobranchs, during a time of major global changes and in the dawn of an important extinction event. Simultaneously, the project will also be an important contribution to the knowledge of some of the most important palaeontological fossil sites of the world, contributing to promote the cultural heritage of Europe. The project will be conducted by a postdoc and a PhD student in co-operation with Univ.- Prof. Dr. Jürgen Kriwet, who is head of the Evolutionary Morphology Research Group at the Department of Palaeontology of the University of Vienna, Austria, and Dr. Giuseppe Marramà from the University of Turin, who is an expert in fossil elasmobranchs.