DOI: 10.5061/dryad.j5t58j4
title: Data from: A fish and tetrapod fauna from Romer’s gap preserved in Scottish Tournaisian floodplain deposits

description: The end‐Devonian mass extinction has been framed as a turning point in
 vertebrate evolution, enabling the radiation of tetrapods, chondrichthyans
 and actinopterygians. Until very recently ‘Romer's Gap’ rendered the
 Early Carboniferous a black box standing between the Devonian and the
 later Carboniferous, but now new Tournaisian localities are filling this
 interval. Recent work has recovered unexpected tetrapod and lungfish
 diversity. However, the composition of Tournaisian faunas remains poorly
 understood. Here we report on a Tournaisian vertebrate fauna from a
 well‐characterized, narrow stratigraphic interval from the Ballagan
 Formation exposed at Burnmouth, Scotland. Microfossils suggest brackish
 conditions and the sedimentology indicates a low‐energy debris flow on a
 vegetated floodplain. A range of vertebrate bone sizes are preserved.
 Rhizodonts are represented by the most material, which can be assigned to
 two taxa. Lungfish are represented by several species, almost all of which
 are currently endemic to the Ballagan Formation. There are two named
 tetrapods, Aytonerpeton and Diploradus, with at least two others also
 represented. Gyracanths, holocephalans, and actinopterygian fishes are
 represented by rarer fossils. This material compares well with vertebrate
 fossils from other Ballagan deposits. Faunal similarity analysis using an
 updated dataset of Devonian–Carboniferous (Givetian–Serpukhovian) sites
 corroborates a persistent Devonian/Carboniferous split. Separation of the
 data into marine and non‐marine partitions indicates more
 Devonian–Carboniferous faunal continuity in non‐marine settings compared
 to marine settings. These results agree with the latest fossil discoveries
 and suggest that the Devonian–Carboniferous transition proceeded
 differently in different environments and among different taxonomic
 groups.
description: Raw diversity dataset
 (.dat format)Raw diversity dataset in
 .dat format for use in PAST, contains additional color-coding and
 formatting.Raw
 diversity.datRaw diversity dataset
 (.csv format)Raw diversity dataset in
 .csv format for use in Microsoft Excel.Raw diversity
 dataset.csvRelative diversity
 dataset (.dat format)Relative diversity
 dataset in .dat format for use in PAST, contains additional color-coding
 and formatting.Relative
 diversity.datRelative diversity
 dataset (.csv format)Relative diversity
 dataset in .csv format for use in Microsoft Excel.Relative diversity
 dataset.csvNMDS axis
 scoresAxis scores from
 Non-parametric MultiDimensional Scaling (NMDS) runs in .csv
 format.Micropalaeontology
 dataMicropalaeontological
 data for samples 1-3 from the TIM. The number of picked specimens (counts)
 of each microfossil type for the 1000, 425, 250 and 125 m size fractions
 is given. The total microfossil assemblage counts (of all size fractions
 combined) for each sample are also recorded, giving the counts and
 microfossils per gram of rock sieved. Abbreviations: actinopt. =
 actinopterygian; indet. = indeterminate.CA axis
 scoresAxis scores from
 correspondence analysis (CA) in .csv format.