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Exceptional soft tissues preservation in a mummified frog-eating Eocene salamander

Fossils are almost always represented by hard tissues but we present here the exceptional case of a three-dimensionally preserved specimen that was ‘mummified’ (likely between 40 and 34 million years ago) in a terrestrial karstic environment. This fossil is the incomplete body of a salamander, Phosp...

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Autores principales: Tissier, Jérémy, Rage, Jean-Claude, Laurin, Michel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629955/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29018606
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3861
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author Tissier, Jérémy
Rage, Jean-Claude
Laurin, Michel
author_facet Tissier, Jérémy
Rage, Jean-Claude
Laurin, Michel
author_sort Tissier, Jérémy
collection PubMed
description Fossils are almost always represented by hard tissues but we present here the exceptional case of a three-dimensionally preserved specimen that was ‘mummified’ (likely between 40 and 34 million years ago) in a terrestrial karstic environment. This fossil is the incomplete body of a salamander, Phosphotriton sigei, whose skeleton and external morphology are well preserved, as revealed by phase-contrast synchrotron X-ray microtomography. In addition, internal structures composed of soft tissues preserved in three dimensions are now identified: a lung, the spinal cord, a lumbosacral plexus, the digestive tract, muscles and urogenital organs that may be cloacal glands. These are among the oldest known cases of three-dimensional preservation of these organs in vertebrates and shed light on the ecology of this salamander. Indeed, the digestive tract contains remains of a frog, which represents the only known case of an extinct salamander that fed on a frog, an extremely rare type of predation in extant salamanders. These new data improve our scarce knowledge on soft tissue anatomy of early urodeles and should prove useful for future biologists and palaeontologists working on urodele evolutionary biology. We also suggest that the presence of bat guano and carcasses represented a close source of phosphorus, favouring preservation of soft tissues. Bone microanatomy indicates that P. sigei was likely amphibious or terrestrial, and was probably not neotenic.
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spelling pubmed-56299552017-10-10 Exceptional soft tissues preservation in a mummified frog-eating Eocene salamander Tissier, Jérémy Rage, Jean-Claude Laurin, Michel PeerJ Paleontology Fossils are almost always represented by hard tissues but we present here the exceptional case of a three-dimensionally preserved specimen that was ‘mummified’ (likely between 40 and 34 million years ago) in a terrestrial karstic environment. This fossil is the incomplete body of a salamander, Phosphotriton sigei, whose skeleton and external morphology are well preserved, as revealed by phase-contrast synchrotron X-ray microtomography. In addition, internal structures composed of soft tissues preserved in three dimensions are now identified: a lung, the spinal cord, a lumbosacral plexus, the digestive tract, muscles and urogenital organs that may be cloacal glands. These are among the oldest known cases of three-dimensional preservation of these organs in vertebrates and shed light on the ecology of this salamander. Indeed, the digestive tract contains remains of a frog, which represents the only known case of an extinct salamander that fed on a frog, an extremely rare type of predation in extant salamanders. These new data improve our scarce knowledge on soft tissue anatomy of early urodeles and should prove useful for future biologists and palaeontologists working on urodele evolutionary biology. We also suggest that the presence of bat guano and carcasses represented a close source of phosphorus, favouring preservation of soft tissues. Bone microanatomy indicates that P. sigei was likely amphibious or terrestrial, and was probably not neotenic. PeerJ Inc. 2017-10-03 /pmc/articles/PMC5629955/ /pubmed/29018606 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3861 Text en ©2017 Tissier et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Paleontology
Tissier, Jérémy
Rage, Jean-Claude
Laurin, Michel
Exceptional soft tissues preservation in a mummified frog-eating Eocene salamander
title Exceptional soft tissues preservation in a mummified frog-eating Eocene salamander
title_full Exceptional soft tissues preservation in a mummified frog-eating Eocene salamander
title_fullStr Exceptional soft tissues preservation in a mummified frog-eating Eocene salamander
title_full_unstemmed Exceptional soft tissues preservation in a mummified frog-eating Eocene salamander
title_short Exceptional soft tissues preservation in a mummified frog-eating Eocene salamander
title_sort exceptional soft tissues preservation in a mummified frog-eating eocene salamander
topic Paleontology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629955/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29018606
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3861
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