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

• September 2026: Emilia Jarochowska has joined Münster University as the Professor in Palaeontology

• Upcoming workshop: Bridging Stratigraphic Palaeobiology and Phylogenetics co-organized by Emilia Jarochowska, Rachel Warnock, Niklas Hohmann, Johan Hidding and Laura Mulvey, will take place at the Lorentz Center in Leiden on 28 September - 2 October 2026

• New paper CarboKitten.jl – an open source toolkit for carbonate stratigraphic modeling with a code companion website

• New preprint: Stratigraphic Paleobiology of Carbonate Systems, DOI: 10.64898/2026.06.12.732006 led by Niklas Hohmann

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.