Bridging adaptive and structural facets of ungulate skull evolution.
BRIDGE-US integrates fossil 3D data, geometric morphometrics, ecomorphology, and phylogenetics to understand how ungulate skulls evolved across deep time.
The Project
How do structural constraints and adaptive pressures interact to shape mammalian herbivore skulls?
The project focuses on the evolutionary interplay between skull geometry and more labile craniodental traits, including dental morphology, mastication, headgear, tusks and other ecologically relevant features. Its ambition is to build an expansive fossil database sampled from museum collections worldwide.
The Team
A multidisciplinary team for fossil data, morphology and macroevolution.
The BRIDGE-US team combines expertise in ungulate macroevolution, taxonomy, fossil collections, geometric morphometrics, ecomorphology, phylogenetics, climate modelling and machine learning.
Juan López Cantalapiedra
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, MNCN-CSIC
Paleobiologist focused on mammalian macroevolution, ungulate ecomorphology and diversification. In BRIDGE-US, he leads the study of broad evolutionary trends in the ungulate craniodental system and coordinates the integration of functional trait data.
Oscar Sanisidro Morant
Universidad de Alcalá
Researcher working at the interface of paleobiology, 3D morphology and macroevolution. In BRIDGE-US, he leads the development of the pan-ungulate skull geometry dataset, including 3D workflows, retrodeformation and geometric morphometrics.
Manuel Hernández Fernández
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Ignacio A. Lazagabaster
Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana
Iris Menéndez
Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
Roger B. J. Benson
American Museum of Natural History
Matthew C. Mihlbachler
New York Institute of Technology
Faysal Bibi
Museum für Naturkunde
Gertrud Rößner
Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie
Guillermo Navalón
University of Cambridge
Torsten Hauffe
University of Fribourg.
María Ríos
Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
Fernando Blanco
Estación Biológica de Doñana
Esperanza Cerdeño
IANIGLA-CONICET
Santiago Hernández Del Pino
IANIGLA-CONICET
Ana Rosa Gómez Cano
Transmitting Science
Sara Gamboa
Universidade de Vigo
Emilia Galli
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
The Papers
Published research
Featured research
Paper
Soon published papers listed here.
The Research Lines
A broad-scale view of ungulate cranial evolution.
Soon published papers listed here.