MindTheGap: Quantifying the completeness of the stratigraphic record and its role in reconstructing the tempo and mode of evolution

Welcome to the webpage of the project.

We develop numerical models to study the structure of the geological record and make better recontructions of past evolutionary dynamics. Our goal is to understand how time, environmental and evolutionary events are represented in imperfect, gappy records and to use this knowledge to reconstruct the history of life and palaeoclimate.

This project is a consortium between Utrecht University and the Netherlands eScience Center. Some software used and developed in this project is a continuation of AstroTOM. See also project record at CORDIS.

Project news

• Xianyi Liu is presenting his talk How does subaerial erosion of carbonate platform distort the sedimentary record? at the SedsOnline webinar on Wednesday, 26 February 2025 at 5 PM CET

• We are presenting a science show Pourquoi les organismes sont-ils différents? and a booth Darwin Freaked Out: Become a Fossil Detective at Science is Wonderful! in Brussels on 13 and 14 March 2025 in the Africa Museum. You can still sign up!

• We have been joined by several new students: Thodoris Tsaveas, Laurent Puyana, Michelle Than, Julia Szpor and Anna Jansen.

• StratPal: An R package for creating stratigraphic paleobiology modelling pipelines is now published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution

• A recording of Niklas Hohmanns’ presentation “Recovering Trait Evolution From Incomplete Carbonate Successions” at PaleoPERCS is now available on YouTube

• Nonparametric estimation of age-depth models from sedimentological and stratigraphic information is now posted as a preprint for public discussion and peer review. The comment phase is closed now.

Funded by the European Union (ERC, MindTheGap, StG project no 101041077). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.