报告人：Logan King

报告题目：Historical Background, Ontogenetic Description, and Quantitative Trends in the Non-Avian Dinosaur Endocranium

合作导师： 徐星

评审委员会主席：尤海鲁

评审委员会委员：胡晗、卢静、李志恒、朱幼安

时间：2025年7月15日（星期二） 上午 10:00

地点：首建金融中心九楼915咖啡室

内容简介：Archosaur palaeoneurology has long sought to understand how behaviour, intelligence, and ecological roles are associated with the brain – especially among crocodilians, non-avian dinosaurs, and modern avians. Of particular interest is how ontogeny, or the development of an organism, is reflected in the dinosaurian fossil record in regards to neuroanatomy. Historically, non-avian dinosaurs have been used as exemplar taxa in palaeoneurology to calculate volumes and intelligence; however, calculations and observations are most frequently collected from subadults or adults of non-avian dinosaurs. The rarity of utilizing juvenile non-avian dinosaurs is attributable to their fossil record, thus making the comparative anatomy and statistical work described below novel with implications for behavioural studies and the evolution of the bird brain across the dinosaur-bird transition. Here, I give a background on the history and general anatomy of dinosaurian neuroanatomy, describe a mostly complete ontogenetic series of endocasts from the non-avian dinosaur Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis, and use geometric morphometrics to investigate how ontogeny and heterochrony (the retention of juvenile traits in adults) influences the evolution of the bird brain. My research for this project found that an ontogenetic series of endocrania from a non-avian, non-theropod organism will not necessarily follow the normal developmental route found in modern archosaurs. This has implications for sensory change throughout development and behavioural changes during maturation – which is already supported by the postcranial fossil record among some taxa. More broadly, I show that there is a statistical link between the anatomy of modern bird brains and those found among juvenile dinosaurs. Most interestingly, I show that the link between the modern bird brain form and the same found within non-avian dinosaurs is similar between members of Ornithischia and Saurischia. This suggests that the bird brain potentially reflects a mosaic of juvenile archosaur traits and not just non-avian dinosaur traits.

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