PALAEONTOLOGY[online]

Tag: Andrew Cuff

Andrew Cuff holds a PhD from the University of Bristol and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at The Royal Veterinary College. He is as a biomechanist, looking at locomotion and feeding across a wide range of vertebrates but with particular interest in archosaurs. His research combines modern anatomical studies and dissections with experiments, computer models, and simulations to test subject specific and broad evolutionary hypotheses.

by Andrew Cuff*1 Introduction: One of the biggest challenges palaeontologists face is how to reconstruct whole animals from their fossils. Most fossil remains are just bones, so how do we go from the bones to the soft tissues? For extinct species, we make deductions by looking at their nearest living relatives. This process is called the extant phylogenetic bracket (EPB). A good example of using the EPB is in reconstructing dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are alive today as their descendants, birds, but the non-avian dinosaurs we all know and love from Jurassic Park look very different from modern birds. Dinosaurs also have other living relatives: the crocodilians. Along with the dinosaurs and some other extinct groups, these are part of a group called the archosaurs (which means ‘ruling reptile...