Increasingly, you are just as likely to find a palaeontologist with a test-tube and lab coat as a chisel and a hard hat. Many otherwise intractable mysteries of the fossil record can be addressed by erecting hypotheses and conducting experiments or to test them. Equally, palaeontological questions are being addressed with a widening range of analytical tools. This session will be attractive to a broad audience because of the important deep time palaeontological problems being addressed by the presenters, but also because their work exemplifies best practice in planning, executing and analysing such experiments – generally not part of the training of palaeontologists, but which many find fascinating. The session is open to submissions from any area of palaeontological research employing an experimental or analytical approach, e.g. taphonomy, functional morphology, biomechanics, ichnology, palaeoecology, macroevolution and geobiology.