Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/J012610/1
Shedding synchrotron light on the fossil record of early plant evolution
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor PCJ Donoghue, University of Bristol, Earth Sciences
- Grant held at:
- University of Bristol, Earth Sciences
- Science Area:
- Atmospheric
- Earth
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Earth
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Science Topics:
- Palaeontology
- Earth & environmental
- Palaeoenvironments
- Palaeoenvironments
- Abstract:
- The evolution of land plants transformed the surface, atmosphere and ocean of our planet - by fixing carbon through biosynthesis and increased rates of weathering, as well as through establishing a terrestrial environment habitable by animals. Our understanding of how this was brought about rests less on primitive living plants (mosses, liverworts and hornworts) whose evolutionary relationships are poorly understood but, rather, from the microscopic fossil remains of the earliest plants. Two fossilization mechanisms have provided us with unique insights: (i) the snapshot of a hot vent community in the Late Devonian Rhynie Chert where the neighboring plants were enveloped and preserved in minerals from the hot fluids, and (ii) the charcoalification of plants by wildfires in a number of much older deposits through the Silurian and Devonian. The process of charcoalification is instant fossilization - it makes plant material chemically inert and physically brittle but resistant to bacterial decay and preserves anatomical structure to the cellular level - making fossils preserved in this way an unparalleled archive in of plant evolutionary history. Ancient charcolified remains of primitive land plants hold insights into their anatomy to the cellular level, but unlocking this information is very difficult. This invaluable material has traditionally been studied by destructively dissection, yielding glimpses of the internal anatomy along cracks that open up in chance orientations. The overall anatomy has to be pieced together by destroying many specimens and the linkage between internal structures are inferential; many structures are never revealed at all. The obvious alternative is to use non-invasive computed tomography - CT scanning. We introduced a very high resolution method in 2007 of studying charcolified remains of advanced seed and flowering plants using a synchrotron - a kind of particle accelerator. However, the results of analyses of the most ancient land plant remains were terrible - crystals of pyrite (fools gold) have grown within the cell spaces of the fossil remains and the huge difference x-ray absorption between the pyrite (high absorption and scattering) and the charcoal (extremely low absorption) making it impossible to make out any anatomical structure. Since 2007 there have been improvements in the synchrotron beamline measurement technology, but also in the processing of the data that it collects. In particular, the stage in which the raw measurements are converted to x-ray slices, has been improved with filtering algorithms that allow us to see the anatomy of the fossil in pin-sharp detail. Our project will entail optimising the measurement parameters and of algorithms involved in the data processing stages, through collaboration with our long-standing Project Partner Prof Marco Stampanoni at the Swiss Light Source Synchrotron - who build the instruments and program the algorithms for data processing. We will exploit these advances in CT scanning new material of early plant remains that we will recover from the critical fossil deposit in Shropshire. We have extensive experience of computer modelling of fossils from synchrotron data and we will analyse computer models of the fossils, dissecting them virtually to better understand the anatomy and physiology of these early plants, in intimate collaboration with the world expert in the biology of these organisms, Prof Dianne Edwards FRS. This work will allow us to understand the sequence of evolutionary steps in early land plant evolution and, in turn, this work will contribute to our understanding of how land plants transformed the planet, and may also prove pivotal in resolving controversy concerning the evolutionary relationships of their living relatives.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/J012610/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Small Grants (FEC)
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Small Grants
This grant award has a total value of £51,020
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £4,757 | £20,153 | £3,076 | £2,713 | £17,417 | £2,904 |
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