Abstract

Life first came on to land in the Palaeozoic Era (541 – 252.2 Ma). The earliest land animals were arthropods (including arachnids and insects) – a group which comprised the vast majority of described living species, and was similarly diverse in early terrestrial ecosystems. This talk will provide an introduction to Palaeozoic terrestrial arthropods, with an emphasis on some of the techniques we have used to better understand them. It is intended to demonstrate the breadth of contemporary palaeontology, which isn’t limited solely to inspecting fossils with microscopes and reporting results. We will foray into (and introduce) high resolution CT scanning, evolutionary developmental biology, molecular clock dating and cladistics, and highlight many of the questions in terrestrialisation which remain unanswered.