PALAEOBIOLOGY AND PALAEOECOLOGY S. Conway Morris, N.J. Butterfield, E.M. Harper, K.J. McNamara & D.B. Norman. Research in palaeobiology in Cambridge is wide-ranging: from the study of Proterozoic oceanic life, through the Cambrian "explosion," to clams and dinosaur evolution. Much of the research is cross- disciplinary involving collaboration with zoologists, botanists, systematists, engineers, sedimentologists, crustal modellers and mineralogists. The group is cohesive and lively, with excellent national and international links and active field-work programmes. Community structure, evolution and organismal interaction - The early evolution of sex, multicellularity and heterotrophy, particularly as they relate to ecological expansion through the Proterozoic and early Cambrian - Ediacaran faunas - Predator: prey interactions in benthic marine communities - The evolution and palaeobiology of archosaurian reptiles - The implications of the mode of feeding, dietary preferences in plesiosaurs. Taxon-based investigation - Palaeobiology and stratigraphy of trilobites and echinoids - Proterozoic & Cambrian (Burgess Shale-type) organisms - Recent and fossil bivalves: their evolutionary history, especially adaptive radiations - Dinosaur anatomy, functional morphology and evolution - Plesiosaurian cranial and postcranial anatomy and muscular reconstruction - Systematics and evolution - Molecular biology and its contribution to understanding evolutionary novelty - Recovery from marine mass-extinctions (especially around 424Ma) - Systematics and phylogeny of sponges, bivalves, dinosaurs and marine reptiles - The use of evolutionary trees to detect macroevolutionary patterns - The development of combined phylogenetic and palaeobiogeographic techniques. Heterochrony in trilobites and echinoids Engineering design and fossil form - Computer-driven engineering design (Finite Elements) is being used to model and investigate form-function relationships in carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs - CAD is being developed to model locomotion in archosaurs - Biomineralization and biomechanics in bivalve molluscs We welcome applications from students with backgrounds in geology, zoology, biology and, when appropriate, physics or biomathematics.