#conodonts — Public Fediverse posts

It's very satisfying to see the crown article of my first PhD student Bryan Shirley published! Skeleton is usually all that remains from an animal in the fossil record, so in order to find out how the animal functioned when alive, we have to squeeze out clues from the skeletal tissues, for example using advanced #ElectronMicroscopy 🔬. We were told that vertebrate tissues are too chemically unstable to study this way, but with the help of experts in microscopy, we were able to make rapid measurements of crystallography in the oldest #vertebrate hashtag#teeth to understand how they function evolved. Turns out the crystal orientation reflects the function! From the #ultrastructure we can estimate how the animals were biting and see their evolutionary adaptations at the level of individual crystals 💎 This was possible thanks to the facilities and funding by EXCITE network and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - German Research Foundation

Now published #OpenAccess at https://rdcu.be/dLpbD
#UtrechtUniversity #evolution #biomineralization #paleontology #paleobiology #conodonts

It's very satisfying to see the crown article of my first PhD student Bryan Shirley published! Skeleton is usually all that remains from an animal in the fossil record, so in order to find out how the animal functioned when alive, we have to squeeze out clues from the skeletal tissues, for example using advanced #ElectronMicroscopy 🔬. We were told that vertebrate tissues are too chemically unstable to study this way, but with the help of experts in microscopy, we were able to make rapid measurements of crystallography in the oldest #vertebrate hashtag#teeth to understand how they function evolved. Turns out the crystal orientation reflects the function! From the #ultrastructure we can estimate how the animals were biting and see their evolutionary adaptations at the level of individual crystals 💎 This was possible thanks to the facilities and funding by EXCITE network and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - German Research Foundation

Now published #OpenAccess at https://rdcu.be/dLpbD
#UtrechtUniversity #evolution #biomineralization #paleontology #paleobiology #conodonts