0((7,1*352*5$0 $%675$&76 November 5 – 8, 2014 • Estrel Berlin • Berlin, Germany Archaeopteryx. Feathers, rich in trace metals, may have functioned as a 'natural biocide' protecting keratinous integument from bacterial decay in life, but also delivering a multitude of selective advantages through color (such as camouflage, display, etc.). The same trace metals that protected feathers in life, might well have contributed to the fossilization of integument that might not otherwise have been preserved in this remarkable early bird. Technical Session VII (Thursday, November 6, 2014, 10:15 AM) CLIMATE DRIVES SPATIOTEMPORAL PATTERNS IN CROCODYLOMORPH DIVERSITY MANNION, Philip, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; JUDD, Jack, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; BUTLER, Richard, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom; BENSON, Roger, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; CARRANO, Matthew, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, United States of America; TENNANT, Jonathan, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; UPCHURCH, Paul, University College London, London, United Kingdom; POL, Diego, Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio, Trelew, Argentina Whereas extant crocodylomorphs are semi-aquatic predators, with low morphological diversity, and are restricted to tropical and subtropical latitudes, their fossil record reveals a much richer evolutionary history. To understand what drives the distribution of living crocodylians, which is critical for assessing extinction risk, we examine spatiotemporal diversity patterns in crocodylomorphs over their 220 million year history. We apply several analytical methods (subsampling, modeling approaches, and phylogenetic diversity estimates) to reconstruct past diversity, utilizing a comprehensive dataset of fossil occurrences (2250 occurrences of >500 species). After their Jurassic radiation, crocodylomorphs suffered a staggered extinction across the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary, with marine thalattosuchians the primary victims. Terrestrial species and other marine groups flourished in the Cretaceous, but there was an overall decline in the latest Cretaceous, with most non-crocodylian groups disappearing prior to the CretaceousPaleogene boundary (K/Pg), although this might be an artefact of uncertain dating of the species-rich Adamantina Formation, as well as the Signor-Lipps effect. Only a small number of non-crocodylians survived into the Cenozoic, but total global crocodylomorph diversity was largely unaffected by the mass extinction. There is evidence for latitudinal decoupling of Cenozoic diversity patterns. Whereas Paleocene extratropical diversity was comparable to latest Cretaceous levels, tropical diversity greatly exceeded that of the latest Cretaceous paleotropics. Tropical diversity declined in the early Eocene, whereas a fall in extratropical diversity began later, during the cooling period of the late Eocene. While extratropical diversity continued to decrease through the Oligocene and into the Neogene, tropical species richness increased and maintained higher diversity levels than the extratropics, forming the latitudinal biodiversity gradient we see today. Statistical comparisons between crocodylomorph diversity and climatic proxies demonstrate a strong correlation over the last 100 million years, interrupted only during the Paleocene. Warm intervals coincide with extratropical peaks, with heightened tropical diversity during cold intervals, but in the chaotic aftermath of the K/Pg mass extinction it is possible that crocodylomorph diversity was decoupled from its environmental driver. Ongoing climate change is likely to have profound repercussions for extant crocodylians. Poster Session IV (Saturday, November 8, 2014, 4:15 - 6:15 PM) IMPROVING COLLABORATION BETWEEN PALEONTOLOGISTS AND PALEOARTISTS: A CASE STUDY, FOCUSED ON THE CERATOPSID DINOSAUR STYRACOSAURUS MANUCCI, Fabio, A.P.P.I., Parma, Italy; MAGANUCO, Simone, Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano, Milano, Italy; PANZARIN, Lukas, A.P.P.I., Parma, Italy; BONADONNA, Davide, A.P.P.I., Parma, Italy Since the origin of the science of paleontology, illustrators and sculptors have cooperated with paleontologists in reconstructing and interpreting fossil organisms. Our aim is to promote and facilitate this scientist-artist cooperation, providing both categories with a technical literature aimed at the comprehensive analysis of the reconstructions. This literature supports the paleontologists in giving reliable references to the paleoartists, which, in turn, can make artwork that is more appropriate for supporting research and for enhancing educational effectiveness for the general public. Therefore, both popularization and academic studies can take advantage of the improved accuracy of their iconographic apparatus. The tools proposed are: a study able to collect and summarize the data dealing with a topic, from the paleobiological and historical-iconographic points of view; and the use of three-dimensional fossil scans and digital models, accessible to a wide audience, that can be easily updated and modified in case of new discoveries and/or revised interpretations. The example presented here focuses on Styracosaurus, a ceratopsid dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of the Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada. New, updated skeletal and muscular reconstructions are proposed. The restoration of the skin is based on fossil evidences in strictly related taxa. Biomechanical, paleoethological, and paleoecological hypotheses are also summarized and reviewed. The application of the extant phylogenetic bracketing (EPB) permits the analysis of some of the most speculative aspects (e.g., soft tissues, behavior) that are fundamental for the 'in vivo' restorations. A three-dimensional digital model is proposed based on the data analyzed. A summary of the paleoenvironmental data is also given, with remarks on paleofaunal and paleofloral assemblages, to make the framework as complete as possible. In the end, in order to show the practical utility of our research, we present some illustrations and a life-sized flesh model by several Italian artists, made by applying different levels of depth of our research. November 2014—PROGRAM AND ABSTRACTS Poster Session II (Thursday, November 6, 2014, 4:15 - 6:15 PM) SYSTEMATICS AND BIOGEOGRAPHY OF PALEOGENE NYCTITHERIIDAE (MAMMALIA, EULIPOTYPHLA?) MANZ, Carly, Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville, FL, United States of America, 32611; BLOCH, Jonathan, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States of America Nyctitheriidae is a diverse clade of small, insectivorous mammals from the Paleogene of Asia, North America, and Europe that have alternately been linked to Eulipotyphla (shrews, moles, hedgehogs), Euarchonta (primates, tree shrews, dermopterans), or Chiroptera (bats). Even intrafamilial relationships are poorly understood, resulting in ambiguity regarding morphological character polarity critical for evaluating supraordinal relationships and uncertainty regarding biogeography for the clade. To address this problem we ran a cladistic analysis of 66 dental characters coded for 51 nyctitheriid taxa, 2 non-nyctitheriid amphilemurid insectivores, and rooted with Maelestes gobiensis. While the oldest known nyctitheriids are found in the early Paleocene of North America, a strict consensus of the two equally most-parsimonious cladograms (330 steps; retention index: 0.601) finds all Asian taxa included in this analysis, including representatives from all three late Paleocene-Eocene Asian subfamilies, basal and paraphyletic with respect to the rest of Nyctitheriidae. This result, while sensitive to outgroup choice, at least suggests an Asian origin for the family by the early Paleocene, with dispersal into North America by the Torrejonian. In the nested North American and European taxa, the subfamilies Nyctitheriinae and Amphidozotheriinae are not monophyletic and may need to be abandoned. The genera Leptacodon and Saturninia are also not monophyletic and should be revised. The multi-species genera Nyctitherium, Plagioctenodon, Plagioctenoides, Cryptotopos, and Euronyctia are found to be monophyletic and Wyonycteris species are paraphyletic with respect to Pontifactor bestiola. Nyctitheriids are first documented in Europe in the early Eocene. The presence of the earliest known European taxa in four otherwise strictly North American clades with late Paleocene members (Leptacodon nascimentoi with L. choristus + L. packi; Placentidens lotus with Ceutholestes dolosus; P. dormaalensis in Plagioctenodon; and W. richardi in Wyonycteris + Pontifactor) suggests an earliest Eocene dispersal event from North America to Europe in at least four nyctitheriid clades, possibly via similar routes as other taxa proposed to be dispersing between the two continents, such as Palaeonictis, Macrocranion, and Teilhardina. This event coincides with a major climatic event and Holarctic dispersal of the mammalian orders Primates, Artiodactyla, Perissodactyla, and hyaenodontid creodonts at the Paleocene–Eocene Boundary. Poster Session I (Wednesday, November 5, 2014, 4:15 - 6:15 PM) THE ROLE OF DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS IN FINITE ELEMENT RESULTS: A CINGULATA JAW AS A CASE STUDY MARCÉ NOGUÉ, Jordi, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Terrassa, Spain; ESCRIG, Christian, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Terrassa, Spain; DE ESTEBANTRIVIGNO, Soledad, Transmitting Science, Piera. Barcelona, Spain; FORTUNY, Josep, , Cerdanyola Valles, Spain Comparative Biology has a historical background in the comparison of anatomical features of organisms in biology for centuries. In recent works using virtual reconstruction of vertebrate structures the combination of different computational methods, such as Finite Element Analysis (FEA), as well as mathematical, statistical, and engineering approaches, are opening new and challenging ways to research skeletal form and function in evolutionary biology. FEA enables stress distribution patterns of different individuals to be obtained by simulating loadings and forces involved in their behavior. To compute the average stress of the whole FEA model, a new approach has been used recently in different works in order to obtain a single measurement that gives the researcher an idea of the relative strength of the structure. However, due to the nature of the FEA data, it needs to be fully developed, taking into account the influence of the weight of the mesh in the results and trying to avoid the artificial noise produced in FEA due to the numerical singularities of the mesh. Consequently, new methodologies including, along with other statistics, meshweighted arithmetic mean and mesh-weighted median, are developed herein to make the results obtained in different models comparable independent from the type and size of Finite Element mesh and avoid artificial noise in the results. These new indicators are first defined and tested in two-dimensional finite element models to later be transferred to 3D models. In order to check their suitability, one Cingulata jaw has been used as a case study and solved using FEA with different meshes. Additionally, FEA has been applied to different members of Cingulata suborders, including eleven extant armadillo taxa and three extinct taxa in order to evaluate and compare its biomechanical behaviour. Our results suggest that the proposed methodologies provide powerful indicators that are suitable to use in comparing different patterns of stress distribution. In particular, the new methods proposed are shown to be extremely useful when exploring the effect of the shape in the strength and stiffness of vertebrate bone structures. Poster Session IV (Saturday, November 8, 2014, 4:15 - 6:15 PM) THE SAUROPOD THAT STOPPED THE TRAIN MARCOS-FERNANDEZ, Fátima, UNED, Madrid, Spain; MOCHO, Pedro, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; ELVIRA, Ana, UNED, Madrid, Spain; PÁRAMO, Adrián, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; ESCASO, Fernando, UNED, MADRID, Spain; ORTEGA, Francisco, UNED, Madrid, Spain Lo Hueco quarry (Upper Cretaceous; Cuenca, Spain) was found in 2007 during the installation of the tracks of the Madrid-Valencia high-speed rail line. The KonzentratLagerstätten of Lo Hueco constitutes a singular accumulation of fossils, especially representing titanosaur sauropods. The site has provided partial skeletons in anatomical connection or with a low dispersion, producing a unique record in Europe. Fieldwork and preparation of the first partial titanosaur skeleton from Lo Hueco (EC1), which is currently regarded as the holotype of a new species, is here reported. In the field, EC1 was exposed to distinct weather conditions affecting its state of preservation, and resulting in changes of the conservation protocols. More than one hundred bone elements where profiled and consolidated before its extraction. Three large 177