Early evolutionary history of the Dinosauria

The early evolutionary history of the Dinosauria has in recent years come under intense scrutiny. In 2017 a radical new hypothesis of early dinosaur evolution, the ornithoscelida hypothesis, was proposed prompting a flurry of research into this area. However, instead of untangling the phylogenetic tree of dinosaurs as hoped this further research unraveled the scientific consensus on broad scale phylogenetic relationships within Dinosauria. A proliferation of hypotheses for broad scale dinosaur relationships have been proposed including several that position the traditionally non-dinosaurian Silesaurs within Dinosauria. It has recently been shown that the current phylogenetic datasets in use may be fundamentally inadequate to resolve this debate. This is especially problematic as phylogenies underpin our understanding of the macroevolution and biogeography of dinosaurs. This project aims to build a new high quality dataset covering early dinosaurs and a wide range of non-dinosaurian ornithodirans. This dataset combined with cutting edge phylogenetic methods will be used to build a new phylogenetic tree of early dinosaurs, critically interrogating the relationships contained within. This will allow the competing hypotheses of early dinosaur evolution to be tested and a new consensus on broad scale phylogenetic relationships to be reached.