COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS AS A TOOL FOR TESTING FUNCTIONAL AND ECOLOGICAL HYPOTHESES IN FOSSIL TAXA (Invited Presentation)

Reconstructing how ancient organisms moved and fed is key to understanding past ecosystems, but is often dismissed as speculative because such inferences can be hard to test. In particular, this work has long been hindered by a lack of objective data on the function of extinct species, especially those without extant analogues. However, the recent development and increasing availability of techniques for visualizing and analysing specimens digitally and in three dimensions, including virtual modelling approaches, provides a quantitative framework for testing specific hypotheses even in problematic fossil taxa. One such approach is computational fluid dynamics (CFD), a tool for simulating flows of fluids (liquids or gases) and their interaction with solid surfaces. Here, I will present case studies of CFD applied to fossil taxa, spanning a range of specimen sizes, taxonomic groups and geological ages. These case studies serve to demonstrate the enormous potential of CFD for addressing long-standing hypotheses for a variety of fossil taxa, making it more feasible than ever before to study the function and ecology of ancient organisms.