Relational Database about Brazilian Triassic tetrapods: biostratigraphic and macroevolutionary inferences using LUND System.

• Grant number: 11/16006-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2012
• End date: February 28, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Zoology - Paleozoology
• Principal Investigator: Max Cardoso Langer
• Grantee: Elisabete Caroline Gimenes Dassie
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In Brazil, Triassic tetrapods are only known in the deposits of the Rosário do Sul Group, in Rio Grande do Sul. In more than a century of study, the search and exploration of outcrops have shown a record of over 40 taxa, a number that expanded especially in the last decade. Based on these fossils, many biostratigraphic proposals have been prepared, albeit preliminary. We believe that some of the difficulties in establishing a more detailed biostratigraphic zonation of the Triassic of Rio Grande do Sul due to a inadequate availability of data on the fossil content of each of the localities prospected in the region. In order to minimize this difficulty, the general objective of this study is the development of a relational database from the extensive existing literature about Triassic tetrapod fossil of Rio Grande do Sul, with the redemption of all the comprehensive information already published about the subject. LUND System, software developed at the Laboratory of Paleontology, FFCLRP-USP, will be used to build the database that, once available on the Internet, will be used as a source of information for other groups of researchers. In this study, the database will be used as input to test the current biostratigraphic proposals, as well as for the establishment of a biostratigraphic zonation with detail in location. Ecological aspects, such as dominance of certain taxa in specific locations and events of faunal replacement will also be investigated, and a case study involving the Triassic archosaurs of Rio Grande do Sul will be done, based on inclusion in this database of information from materials cataloged in collections of Rio Grande do Sul, in order to trace macroevolutionary patterns of the group.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

DASSIE, Elisabete Caroline Gimenes. Brazilian Triassic tetrapods: an investigation involving database and clustering analysis.. 2014. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC) Ribeirão Preto.