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First filter feeding in the Early Triassic: cranial morphological convergence between Hupehsuchus and baleen whales
Modern baleen whales are unique as large-sized filter feeders, but their roles were replicated much earlier by diverse marine reptiles of the Mesozoic. Here, we investigate convergence in skull morphology between modern baleen whales and one of the earliest marine reptiles, the basal ichthyosauromor...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10408079/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37550649 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-023-02143-9 |
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author | Fang, Zi-Chen Li, Jiang-Li Yan, Chun-Bo Zou, Ya-Rui Tian, Li Zhao, Bi Benton, Michael J. Cheng, Long Lai, Xu-Long |
author_facet | Fang, Zi-Chen Li, Jiang-Li Yan, Chun-Bo Zou, Ya-Rui Tian, Li Zhao, Bi Benton, Michael J. Cheng, Long Lai, Xu-Long |
author_sort | Fang, Zi-Chen |
collection | PubMed |
description | Modern baleen whales are unique as large-sized filter feeders, but their roles were replicated much earlier by diverse marine reptiles of the Mesozoic. Here, we investigate convergence in skull morphology between modern baleen whales and one of the earliest marine reptiles, the basal ichthyosauromorph Hupehsuchus nanchangensis, from the Early Triassic, a time of rapid recovery of life following profound mass extinction. Two new specimens reveal the skull morphology especially in dorsal view. The snout of Hupehsuchus is highly convergent with modern baleen whales, as shown in a morphometric analysis including 130 modern aquatic amniotes. Convergences in the snout include the unfused upper jaw, specialized intermediate space in the divided premaxilla and grooves around the labial margin. Hupehsuchus had enlarged its buccal cavity to enable efficient filter feeding and probably used soft tissues like baleen to expel the water from the oral cavity. Coordinated with the rigid trunk and pachyostotic ribs suggests low speeds of aquatic locomotion, Hupehsuchus probably employed continuous ram filter feeding as in extant bowhead and right whales. The Early Triassic palaeoenvironment of a restrictive lagoon with low productivity drove Hupehsuchus to feed on zooplankton, which facilitated ecosystem recovery in the Nanzhang-Yuan’an Fauna at the beginning of the Mesozoic. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12862-023-02143-9. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10408079 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104080792023-08-09 First filter feeding in the Early Triassic: cranial morphological convergence between Hupehsuchus and baleen whales Fang, Zi-Chen Li, Jiang-Li Yan, Chun-Bo Zou, Ya-Rui Tian, Li Zhao, Bi Benton, Michael J. Cheng, Long Lai, Xu-Long BMC Ecol Evol Research Modern baleen whales are unique as large-sized filter feeders, but their roles were replicated much earlier by diverse marine reptiles of the Mesozoic. Here, we investigate convergence in skull morphology between modern baleen whales and one of the earliest marine reptiles, the basal ichthyosauromorph Hupehsuchus nanchangensis, from the Early Triassic, a time of rapid recovery of life following profound mass extinction. Two new specimens reveal the skull morphology especially in dorsal view. The snout of Hupehsuchus is highly convergent with modern baleen whales, as shown in a morphometric analysis including 130 modern aquatic amniotes. Convergences in the snout include the unfused upper jaw, specialized intermediate space in the divided premaxilla and grooves around the labial margin. Hupehsuchus had enlarged its buccal cavity to enable efficient filter feeding and probably used soft tissues like baleen to expel the water from the oral cavity. Coordinated with the rigid trunk and pachyostotic ribs suggests low speeds of aquatic locomotion, Hupehsuchus probably employed continuous ram filter feeding as in extant bowhead and right whales. The Early Triassic palaeoenvironment of a restrictive lagoon with low productivity drove Hupehsuchus to feed on zooplankton, which facilitated ecosystem recovery in the Nanzhang-Yuan’an Fauna at the beginning of the Mesozoic. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12862-023-02143-9. BioMed Central 2023-08-08 /pmc/articles/PMC10408079/ /pubmed/37550649 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-023-02143-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Fang, Zi-Chen Li, Jiang-Li Yan, Chun-Bo Zou, Ya-Rui Tian, Li Zhao, Bi Benton, Michael J. Cheng, Long Lai, Xu-Long First filter feeding in the Early Triassic: cranial morphological convergence between Hupehsuchus and baleen whales |
title | First filter feeding in the Early Triassic: cranial morphological convergence between Hupehsuchus and baleen whales |
title_full | First filter feeding in the Early Triassic: cranial morphological convergence between Hupehsuchus and baleen whales |
title_fullStr | First filter feeding in the Early Triassic: cranial morphological convergence between Hupehsuchus and baleen whales |
title_full_unstemmed | First filter feeding in the Early Triassic: cranial morphological convergence between Hupehsuchus and baleen whales |
title_short | First filter feeding in the Early Triassic: cranial morphological convergence between Hupehsuchus and baleen whales |
title_sort | first filter feeding in the early triassic: cranial morphological convergence between hupehsuchus and baleen whales |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10408079/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37550649 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-023-02143-9 |
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