This is the public website of European Research Council Starting Grant on TEtraPod MOrphology led by Prof Roger Benson, University of Oxford

The work was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program 2014–2018 under grant agreement 677774 (European Research Council [ERC] Starting Grant: TEMPO)

The TEMPO project aims to address central hypotheses in evolutionary research, and in doing to shed light on a single core question in biology: How did the vast diversity of animals and their morphologies come of be? This question is important to society because it enhances human knowledge of the deep evolution and origins of biological organisms on Earth today. The project focusses on birds, mammals, and thier extinct relatives such as dinosaurs and mammal-like reptiles.

The approach of the project is to address three central questions:

(1) How have rates and constraints of phenotypic evolution varied through geological time? This is a quantitative statistical question. By quantifying the structure of the skeleton in many species, including both living and fossil animals, we hope to characterise how patterns of evolution vary among groups and through time. Understanding *how* they vary is the first step in answering *why* they vary.

(2) Are these patterns consistent with the occurrence of global niche-filling? This relates to the hypothesis of adaptive radiations, that evolution of organisms is a response to the distribution of ecological opportunities on Earth through time.

(3) Can evolutionary versatility enabled by key innovations explain these patterns? This relates to the hypothesis that some groups of animals are simply more versatile than others, due to features of their body plan, structure, or development.