The TW:eed Project is a scientific research project studying fossils and environments from
the Early Carboniferous period, roughly 350 million years ago. Teams of experts from the
Universities of
Cambridge,
Leicester and
Southampton,
the
British Geological Survey and
National Museums of Scotland are collaborating to study some
spectacular newly-discovered fossils which will fill in a significant gap in our understanding
of how tetrapods moved from water onto land.
Tim and I worked under the same PhD supervisor, the late Alec Panchen, in the late 1970's and early
1980's. Tim had a series of post-doctoral positions including one with Bob Carroll in Montreal, as well
as one with Alec Panchen. Tim later left academia to work in Further Education, but retained contact
with his former colleagues. He devoted much of his own time to exploring Early Carboniferous localities
in Scotland's Border Region, finally discovering sites that have yielded tetrapods.
From this beginning,
the enterprise has grown into a NERC-funded four-year consortium project. It is largely down to Tim's
unstinting efforts, and his encouragment of the late Stan Wood to explore other sites, that we owe this
exciting new window onto a nearly 20 million year hiatus in the fossil record known as Romer's Gap.
Tim worked with me as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate during the NERC-funded TW:eed project, and
although now retired (like me) continues to work with me on publications and still pursues his field work.
Stephanie has been working as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate on a
project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council -
Locomotion
in the earliest tetrapods: testing models of terrestriality. This project is in
collaboration with
John Hutchinson and Julia Molnar at the
Royal Veterinary College. Her paper on the range of motion
of the limbs of
Ichthyostega was published in Nature last year (see
Publications List and
Ichthyostega page). We have discovered that the centra, ribs
and transverse processes of the neural spines are quite different from previous suggestions, and that
there were ossified sternebrae along the ventral midline. (See also under
Ichthyostega: Current Work)
Stephanie now has a position at the Museum of Comparative Biology (MCZ) at Harvard working on locomotion
in tetrapods, among other projects. We are collaborating with her on our rhizodont humerus project (see
Carboniferous Fishes).
Per Ahlberg
Per Ahlberg was my first graduate student. His thesis was on porolepiform fishes, first begun as an
undergraduate project. After some years in Oxford and at the Natural History Museum in London,
he was appointed
Professor of Evolutionary Organismal Biology in the University of
Uppsala in Sweden. After several years of working on tetrapodomorph fishes and
near-tetrapods from the
Baltic States with Australian and Baltic colleagues, Per and I are currently working
together again on a series of projects on Devonian tetrapods.
Marcello Ruta
Marcello Ruta is now a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lincoln.
We have published together on the Carboniferous tetrapod
Silvanerpeton miripedes from East Kirkton, and we
are also working with Tim Smithson on
Eldeceeon rolfei, another animal from that locality. We have also
worked on the Carboniferous anthracosaur
Gephyrostegus bohemicus, and the Permian possible embolomere
Chronisaurus dongusensis. Marcello was a co-author on the overview paper from the TW:eed Project
(
Clack et al. 2016) and is currently on the team
redescribing
Acherontiscus caledoniae (see
Other Early Tetrapods).
Marcello is our go-to expert on techniques of phylogenetic analysis.
Mike Coates
Mike Coates was employed as my Post-Doctoral Research Associate to work on the
postcranial skeleton of
Acanthostega, from the start of the project in 1989 for five years
until 1995. He was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council for this period.
He is now
Professor in the Department of Organismal Biology & Anatomy, University of
Chicago. Mike works particularly on early chondrichthyans and the origin of the chondrichthyan body plan.
He also continues his interest in early ray-finned fishes.
Sarah Finney
Sarah worked with me on the
Acanthostega project for 14 years. Her exquisite
work, on the very hard matrix from Greenland, can be seen especially well in the skull
of
Acanthostega known as 'Grace', and in the articulated Tournaisian specimen
of
Pederpes from Scotland known as 'Peter'. Sarah was funded by a succession
of research grants from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK. Sarah is
now head of the Conservation Unit in the
Sedgwick Museum, Department of Earth Sciences,
University of Cambridge. We continue to collaborate on specimen-related projects.
Keturah (Ket) Smithson
No relation to Tim, Ket worked with us as a technical assistant, and soon found her niche in the field of
micro-CT scanning. She scanned many of our specimens and then segmented them into 3-dimensional images
which are featured in many of our publications. Two years ago, as our funding ran out, she obtained a part-time
position as the Department of Zoology's CT operator, and more recently has become full time in that post.
She still continues to work with us on the TW:eed Project and has done an amazing job on Acherontiscus.