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

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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

  • Niklas Hohmann is presenting his poster “Phylogenetic Inference from an Incomplete Fossil Record” at the Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona (17-22 August 2025)

  • The article Enhancing the Accuracy of Dynamic Time Warping by Integrating Stratigraphic Constraints Into the Automated Correlation of Sedimentary Sequences by R. Samant, T. Giorgino, E. Jarochowska and D. De Vleeschouwer has just appeared in Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology.

  • We hosted the CycloNet meeting: a conference and workshop for cyclostratigraphers, including a field trip to Devonian and Carboniferous localities in Belgium. The meeting took place at Utrecht University on 26th - 29th June.

    CycloNet 2025 participants at Utrecht University. Photo: E. Advokaat.

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.