bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Trace fossils from the Late Proterozoic of North Carolina: early conquest of deep-sea bottoms
Authors: Seilacher Adolf , Pflüger Friedrich 
Published: January 2018

The trace fossil Oldhamia reflects systematic strip mining of an infaunal, worm-like sediment feeder. It is known from many parts of the world in Cambrian complexes, whose flysch-like and accreted character suggests deposition on a deep continental slope. In similar rocks of the North Carolina Slate Belt. Oldhamia is associated with rare specimens of the Ediacara-type body fossil Pteridinium, as well as tool marks of a problematic stiff organism reminiscent of graptolite stipes (Vendospica).This occurrence (1) extends the stratigraphic range of Oldhamia into the Late Proterozoic. It also reminds us that, by that time, worm-like, endobenthic bilaterians (2) had become behaviorally specialized and (3) had colonized shelf and deep-sea bottoms well before the Cambrian evolutionary explosion. (4) Since bioturbators were small and did burrow strictly along bedding planes, their mixing effect was as yet negligible. (5) The new tool-mark fossils tell us that complex, organic-walled and perhaps colonial organisms were around in addition to sand-corals (Psammocorallia), possibly sponges and the probably plasmodial Vendobionta.
An iterative evolutionary pattern in the gastropod genus Melanopsis
Authors: Staley Andrew W. , Geary Dana H. , Müller Pál , Magyar Imre 
Published: January 2018

Iterative patterns of morphological evolution present a unique opportunity to explore the causal mechanisms of evolution. We report here on an iterative morphological trend within a clade of prosobranch gastropods.We studied the Melanopsis impressa lineage from Middle to Late Miocene marginal lake sediments of the Pannonian basin (central and eastern Europe). The descendants of M. impressa evolved a type of whorl shouldering in at least two different instances. The first instance occurs in the Late Miocene Pannonian Stage, when the smooth and conical M. impressa gives rise to M. fossilis, a species characterized by strong shouldering. The disappearance of M. fossilis coincides with a major contraction in the areal extent of the lake and with a shift from brackish to fresh water at the end of the Pannonian Stage. Melanopsis impressa may have survived this event in marginal drainage environments; during the subsequent Pontian Stage, M. impressa or a close relative gives rise to a second shouldered descendant (M. petrovici-M. cylindrica complex).The constructional aspects of shouldering are different in each case. In the first instance, shouldering is characterized by a broad and rounded ridge in the middle of the adapical half of the body whorl, usually associated with a depressed area adapically. In contrast, shouldering in the second instance is a simple, rounded or angled spiral prominence on the adapical half of the whorl.Repeated development of a character in a single lineage might suggest that the parallelism is due to an intrinsically defined pathway. The different constructional aspects of shouldering in our examples, however, suggest that it was the selective regime that was repetitive. The brackish paratethyan sea of the Pannonian Stage and the smaller, freshwater lake of the subsequent Pontian Stage differed in many respects, but hydrodynamic or predatory selection pressures may have evoked similar morphological responses.
The role of environment in the diversity and evolutionary turnover rates of the Foraminiferida
Authors: Starratt S.W. 
Published: January 2018

Taxonomic databases are important tools in the study of faunal diversity and evolution. The usefulness of the inferences drawn from these databases is diminished when the role of environment is not considered. Analysis of the foraminiferal database at the genus and family levels is used to demonstrate the effect of water depth on presumed changes in taxonomic diversity and evolutionary turnover rates.This paleoenvironmental effect is particularly noticeable when foraminiferal faunas of the late Paleozoic and the Mesozoic and Cenozoic intervals are compared. The late Paleozoic fauna is dominated by the Fusulinina and shallow-water (0–200 m) Textularuna. Standing diversity fluctuates greatly, and evolutionary turnover is high. This reflects short-term fluctuations in sea level which led to the rapid formation and destruction of narrow ecological niches. Evolutionary turnover appears to be related to reef growth during this time. This trend may also reflect an increased number of k-selected specialists which serve as proxy indicators for a slow-circulating oligotrophic ocean system. Shallow-water taxa may also be predisposed to extinction due to their reliance on symbiotic algae. The extinction event at the end of the Permian resulted in the loss of almost 70% of the standing generic diversity. This included the complete loss of the Fusulinina as well as a number of shallow-water textularids. Cohort survivorship curves are steep and taxon ages short during this time.The diversity increase over the past 245 million years has largely been due to the addition of deep-water (200-10,000 m) taxa. This was particularly true during the Late Cretaceous and early Eocene, and may reflect the relatively high eustatic sea level during those intervals. The relationship between reef development and evolutionary turnover rates is less clear during this time interval. Although the extinction event that marked the end of the Cretaceous resulted in a greater loss in absolute taxonomic diversity than occurred at the end of the Permian, the relative loss in generic diversity was only about 21% due to the large number of deep-water taxa. When the entire fauna is considered, cohort survivorship curves are less steep and taxon ages are longer than in the late Paleozoic, but when only the shallow-water taxa are considered, the results are similar to those for the late Paleozoic.
The atlas-axis complex of the Late Paleozoic Diadectomorpha and basal amniotes: defining the primitive condition of the atlas-axis complex of amniotes
Authors: Sumida Stuart S. , Lombard R. Eric. , Berman David S 
Published: January 2018

During the past decade, phylogenetic analyses of Late Paleozoic tetrapods have consistently demonstrated that the Permo-Pennsylvanian tetrapod suborder Diadectomorpha is closely related to more traditionally defined amniotes. Recent analyses provide two competing hypotheses of relationship: 1) the Diadectomoropha is the sister group of all amniotes, or 2) the Diadectomorpha and Synapsida comprise the most primitive clade within the Amniota. Subsequently more derived groups within the Amniota are: the reptilian family Captorhinidae, and the Protorothyrididae plus the Diapsida. The availability of well preserved atlas-axis complexes for all of the better known genera of diadectomorphs now allow a determination of the primitive condition of the atlas-axis complex for the Amniota. Further, accepted hypotheses of phylogenetic relationships among Late Paleozoic tetrapods allow mapping of features of the atlas-axis complex onto predefined topologies so that the transformations of the complex may be analyzed.The diadectomorph atlas-axis complex may be characterized in the following manner: paired, well developed proatlases and atlantal neural arches; lack of proatlantal and atlantal neural spines with only posteriorly directed epipophyses present; an extremely robust atlantal intercentrum; tight articulation of the atlantal pleurocentrum with the dorsal aspect of the axial intercentrum preventing exposure of the former on the ventral surface of the vertebral column; a large, anteriorly directed midline projection of the axial intercentrum; a tall and well-developed axial neural spine, presumably for attachment of strong occipital muscles and ligaments. Except for the anterior projection of the axial intercentrum (which is an autapomorphic feature of diadectomorphs), basal amniotes share all of these features with diadectomorphs. Shared, derived features of the atlas-axis complex of diadectomorphs plus other basal amniotes include: 1) fusion of the axial centrum and neural arch, 2) small epipophyses of the atlantal neural arch and, with the exception of Tseajaia, 3) fusion of the atlantal pleurocentrum to the dorsal surface of the axial intercentrum.The morphology of the atlas-axis complex alone is not sufficient to generate hypotheses of relationship between diadectomorphs and other basal amniotes. However, the atlas-axis complexes of diadectomorphs and other basal amniotes are clearly more similar to one-another than to those of other taxa.
Mid-miocene post-disturbance vegetation dynamics and the emergence of cold desert/steppe vegetation in the northern intermountain region
Authors: Taggart Ralph E. , Cross Aureal T. 
Published: January 2018

The mesic broad-leaved and coniferous forests of the Middle Miocene of the northern Intermountain region of the United States contrast strongly with the semi-arid shrub/grassland steppe vegetation that comprises the extant vegetation. This contrast is a consequence of the progressive development of a regional rain shadow, beginning in the Late Miocene, coincident with the uplift of the Cascades to the west. It is generally assumed that the emergence of the extant vegetation was a consequence of a combination of in situ evolution of taxa in response to moisture and thermal stress and the immigration of taxa already adapted to such stressful environments. The study of stratigraphically sequential successional vegetation stages in a number of Middle Miocene floras in the northern Great Basin suggest that many elements of the extant vegetation of the region were already present as taxa adapted to the several characteristic environmental conditions of landscapes affected by volcanic disturbance.The Middle Miocene “climax” vegetation of southeastern Oregon and southwestern and southcentral Idaho, documented by paleobotanical and palynological data from floras such as Stinking Water (Oregon), Succor Creek (Oregon-Idaho), and Trapper Creek (Idaho), was a complex mosaic of vegetation types comprised of broad-leaved evergreen, mixed mesophytic, and mixed coniferous forest elements. These floras are preserved in volcaniclastic sediments. Palynological analysis of sequential samples from overlying strata indicate that the bulk of the sedimentary record at each of these sites records vegetation in varying stages of recovery following destruction of forests by local volcanism. The earliest seral stages following such events are characterized by taxa, including Artemisia, Sarcobatus, and other Malvaceae, Chenopodiaceae, Amaranthaceae, Compositae, and Gramineae that represent important components of the extant vegetation of the region.An ash-covered landscape, denuded of forest cover, is a highly stressful environment. Ash forms an edaphically dry and nutrient-poor substrate and such sites would be exposed to a significantly greater range of annual temperatures and much greater exposure than forested sites. Grasses, forbs, and shrubs that evolved in ways that permitted the colonization of such landscapes would be preadapted to the drier and less equable climates that would accompany the development of the Cascadian rain shadow. In addition, such successional areas also supported a mammalian fauna dominated by grazers in contrast to the browsing-dominated fauna of the climax forest mosaic. It would thus appear that the post-disturbance grass/forb/shrub communities provided an evolutionary proving ground for mammalian niches that now dominate the extant cold desert/steppe biome.
A unique taphonomic profile for Lower Carboniferous crinoids of western Canada and possible Recent analogs
Authors: Terry Richard E. , Meyer David L. 
Published: January 2018

During diving studies of comatulid crinoids at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef, detatched but intact crinoid arms and arm groups were sometimes encountered on the substratum. These arms are thought to originate through autotomy or breakage during attacks of predatory fish that remove the calyx and visceral mass but leave the arms intact. Detached arms remain in a vital condition for several days but soon lose pinnules and fragment as decay ensues.Occurrence of intact, isolated arms and arm groups in the Banff Formation of western Alberta requires a catastrophic disturbance (not necessarily predation) followed closely, if not coincidently, with burial. The loose arms are preserved mostly as short, straight, distal arm segments (1–2 cm long) or sometimes as long, curved arm segments (2–4.5 cm). The arm groups range from complete arm rays to partial arm rays. If originally present, pinnules are still articulated to the arms and cover plates are preserved on most pinnules. Biserial arms with pinnules, uniserial arms and uniserial arms with pinnules occur in a 2:1 ratio to crinoids having that type of arm structure whereas cuneiform arms with pinnules have a 3:1 ratio of preserved loose arms and arm groups to calyces. Loose, single arms and arm groups account for 33% and 11%, respectively, of the identifiable crinoid remains for the western, deep-water Banff Formation crinoid fauna. Overall, this fauna shows an equitable range from complete articulated crinoid crowns with attached stems to loose isolated plates. The preservation of this fauna has both a time-averaged, accumulation component as well as an instantaneous storm deposited component as represented by both completely articulated crinoids and the high abundance (44%) of loose arms and arm groups. The comparatively anomalous abundance of loose arms and arm groups probably originated through breakage or autotomy coincident with the burial event.In comparison, the Gilmore City crinoid fauna of Iowa represents an obrution deposit with over 75% of the crinoid specimens preserved as complete articulated crowns with attached stems whereas the eastern Banff Formation crinoid fauna is preserved as a shallow-water, time-averaged accumulation of mainly isolated crinoid calyx plates (54%) and partial calyces (20%). However, both of these faunas have few preserved loose arms or arm groups (<4% for either fauna).
Early metazoan evolution and the concept of progress
Authors: Valentine James W. 
Published: January 2018

The number of cell types present in a metazoan body is a reasonable metric of its complexity. If evolutionary progress is defined as increase in complexity, from “lower” to “higher” forms, then progress occurs as cell-type numbers are increased. Using a lumper's definition of cell type, living metazoans range from 4 (placozoans) to over 210 (higher mammals) somatic cell types. The earliest fossil traces may be 580 my old and require an organism of about 30 cell types, while the primitive members of higher invertebrate phyla, appearing near 525 my ago, require about 50 cell types, an increase of about 0.3 cell type/my. Average Phanerozoic cell-type increase was about 0.4 cell type/my. These estimates are indistinguishable considering their crudity, and imply an origin of metazoans between about 645 and 680 my ago. While it may have been episodic rather than gradual, evolutionary progress would seem to have continued throughout metazoan history.The Cambrian “explosion” occurred chiefly among organisms of 50 or so cell types, but so far as one can judge represented no major leap in the complexity of body plans. Rather it was characterized by a radiation of a number of clades that were at about this same level of complexity, one that permitted the construction of a rich variety of body plans, within a few million years. The diversity of the daughter body types was thus spectacularly broad. Though it may have been only a locus on a sweeping trend of continuing progress, the Cambrian explosion was something special in the history of life.Concomitant with the rise in cell type numbers during the late Precambrian, the genetic regulatory apparatus that characterizes most metazoans was assembled, involving a cascading, hierarchical system of genes with feedback mechanisms and with informational systems that are not directly encoded. This flexible and open-ended regulatory architecture underlies evolutionary progress in metazoans, and permitted the evolution of cell differentiation. It may prove possible to judge the steps in the assembly of this regulatory system from the early metazoan record of body types, and conversely, it may prove possible to reconstruct the pattern of divergence of clades and the rise of body types as comparative data on pattern-formation systems become available for a variety of major taxa.
Cladistics and the rate of homoplastic morphological evolution
Authors: Wilkinson Mark , Benton Michael J. 
Published: January 2018

Estimates of evolutionary rates require measurement of amounts of change and the period of time over which such change has occurred. Many methods of estimating amount of morphological change are available (including phenetic and morphometric measures) but in cladistics the unit of change is the step or transformation.For a given cladistic data set the length (total number of steps) of the most parsimonious cladogram gives a lower bound estimate of the amount of evolution that has occurred within the clade. This measure is correlated with numbers of characters and taxa (and other internal parameters) in the data sets and so cannot be used to compare amounts of evolution in different clades where data set sizes vary. Further, the number of characters incorporated into cladistic studies varies widely and is likely to be a poor basis for an estimate of overall amounts of change.One approach to the measurement of amounts of change which avoids some of these problems is to focus upon comparative levels of homoplasy rather than total amounts of morphological evolution. Most parsimonious cladograms provide lower bound estimates of the amount of homoplasy measured as extra steps.Maximally homoplastic data provides the theoretical upper limit to the amount of homoplasy that can be estimated for a particular data set. Combining this with estimates of group duration derived from the fossil record or from molecular clocks provides an estimate of maximum rates of homoplastic evolution that can be measured using cladistic parsimony and discrete data.Randomly permuted data provides a measure of the amount of homoplastic evolution that would be reconstructed by parsimony analysis for character data that is independent of phylogeny. Combining this with estimates of group duration provides estimates of rate of homoplastic evolution that would be sufficient to render the application of parsimony to the problems of phylogeny reconstruction inappropriate.Comparative estimates of the rates of homoplastic evolution in different clades can be used to test macroevolutionary theories.
Comparative taphonomy of Miocene fossil biotas with soft tissues in lake deposits: Clarkia (Idaho, U.S.A.) and Shanwang (Shandong, P.R. China)
Authors: Yang Hong , Smiley Charles J. , Yang Shipu 
Published: January 2018

The recent discovery of Tertiary plant fossil DNA from the Clarkia Miocene lacustrine deposits, northern Idaho, has raised concerns of the taphonomic conditions of preservation of fossil biotas with soft tissues and the further prediction of such occurrence in ancient lake deposits. The exceptionally preserved Clarkia fossil biota is compared with the Shanwang biota in Shandong Provence, eastern P.R.China, another example of Miocene conservative fossil lagerstatten. The comparison shows following similarities between the two extraordinarily preserved Miocene fossil biotas: (1) both were deposited under similar age, geological background, and depositional environment; (2) humid, warm-temperate paleoclimate was inferred in both areas; (3) both deposits contain diverse fossil biotas with soft tissues but having limited benthic organisms; (4) higher similarity coefficient exists between fossil diatoms, higher plants and insects at genus or higher taxonomic levels; and (5) overall similar taphofacies exists between the two fossil biotas.However, following differences appear between the two areas: (1) diverse vertebrate fossils in Shanwang site are sharply contrasted with the Clarkia biota in which terrestrial vertebrates are absent; (2) comparison of taphonomic signatures shows slightly different patterns between the two; (3) the two Miocene lakes originated in different manners, thus differences appear in configuration, stratification, and other paleolimnologic parameters between the two ancient lakes.The comparison of the two extraordinary fossil biotas, coupled with geologic, sedimentologic, paleoecologic and paleobiochemical studies, demonstrates that the formation and preservation of such fossil biotas with soft tissues in ancient lake deposits were strongly controlled by various paleolimnologic, paleoclimatic, taphonomic and compositional parameters.
Paleobiogeography of Devonian vertebrates
Authors: Young Gavin C. 
Published: January 2018

Five distinctive vertebrate faunas characterised by endemic taxa can be recognised for the Early Devonian (Euramerica, Siberia, Tuva, China, and East Gondwana). By Late Devonian time these faunal provinces are obscured by widespread taxa which also inhabited nonmarine aquatic environments, but indicate faunal communication between Gondwana, Euramerica and China. This marked change in pattern between the Early and Late Devonian may be attributed to intrinsic (evolutionary) or extrinsic causal factors. Dispersal capabilities of aquatic vertebrates may have increased during the initial gnathostome radiation of the Devonian, but a predominantly extrinsic cause (e.g. global change in geography or climate) is suggested by the similar pattern for marine invertebrate faunas of Early Devonian endemism and Late Devonian cosmopolitanism. Outstanding problems of Devonian vertebrate biogeography include faunal differentiation on the largest landmass of the time (Gondwana), and the nature of barriers and connections between East and West Gondwana, East Gondwana and South and North China, and West Gondwana and Euramerica. A vertebrate equivalent of the cool-water Malvinokaffric invertebrate faunal realm of the Siluro-Devonian is not clearly identified, but vertebrate data from southern Africa and south America are sparse.Wide latitudinal distributions for some Late Devonian vertebrate taxa appear anomalous, and could indicate either reduced global climatic gradients, or erroneous paleogeographic base maps. There are difficulties in formulating a hypothesis of global warming and/or major paleogeographic change in a way which clearly distinguishes basic from interpreted data. Three major subdisciplines (paleomagnetism, paleoclimatology, paleobiogeography) contribute to Paleozoic paleogeographic reconstructions. Their data tend to be organised and represented in different ways, but each relies on the same principle of concordance with a general pattern (Young 1990). Degree of consilience of a hypothesis based on one data set (the extent to which it explains patterns within an unrelated set of data) is a primary criterion for accepting or rejecting the hypothesis. Apparent polar wander path representation facilitates testing of paleomagnetic data against those paleoclimatic or paleobiogeographic data which provide evidence of paleolatitude. However, as well as the simple indication of paleolatitude, biogeographic and some other qualitative data sets provide more complex evidence concerning connections or barriers between regions, for which APWP representation is not appropriate. Cladistic analysis of hierarchically organised data sets (Young, 1986, 1987) provides a means of integrating qualitative paleobiogeographic, paleoclimatic, and paleogeographic data such that inconsistencies in the evidence are emphasised, and the hypothesis is exposed to falsification. These ideas are illustrated using Devonian examples.