Cargando…

Refining the marine reptile turnover at the Early–Middle Jurassic transition

Even though a handful of long-lived reptilian clades dominated Mesozoic marine ecosystems, several biotic turnovers drastically changed the taxonomic composition of these communities. A seemingly slow paced, within-geological period turnover took place across the Early–Middle Jurassic transition. Th...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Fischer, Valentin, Weis, Robert, Thuy, Ben
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7906043/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33665003
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10647
_version_ 1783655220819001344
author Fischer, Valentin
Weis, Robert
Thuy, Ben
author_facet Fischer, Valentin
Weis, Robert
Thuy, Ben
author_sort Fischer, Valentin
collection PubMed
description Even though a handful of long-lived reptilian clades dominated Mesozoic marine ecosystems, several biotic turnovers drastically changed the taxonomic composition of these communities. A seemingly slow paced, within-geological period turnover took place across the Early–Middle Jurassic transition. This turnover saw the demise of early neoichthyosaurians, rhomaleosaurid plesiosaurians and early plesiosauroids in favour of ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurians and cryptoclidid and pliosaurid plesiosaurians, clades that will dominate the Late Jurassic and, for two of them, the entire Early Cretaceous as well. The fossil record of this turnover is however extremely poor and this change of dominance appears to be spread across the entire middle Toarcian–Bathonian interval. We describe a series of ichthyosaurian and plesiosaurian specimens from successive geological formations in Luxembourg and Belgium that detail the evolution of marine reptile assemblages across the Early–Middle Jurassic transition within a single area, the Belgo–Luxembourgian sub-basin. These fossils reveal the continuing dominance of large rhomaleosaurid plesiosaurians, microcleidid plesiosaurians and Temnodontosaurus-like ichthyosaurians up to the latest Toarcian, indicating that the structuration of the upper tier of Western Europe marine ecosystems remained essentially constant up to the very end of the Early Jurassic. These fossils also suddenly record ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurians and cryptoclidid plesiosaurians by the early Bajocian. These results from a geographically-restricted area provide a clearer picture of the shape of the marine reptile turnover occurring at the early–Middle Jurassic transition. This event appears restricted to the sole Aalenian stage, reducing the uncertainty of its duration, at least for ichthyosaurians and plesiosaurians, to 4 instead of 14 million years.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7906043
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher PeerJ Inc.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-79060432021-03-03 Refining the marine reptile turnover at the Early–Middle Jurassic transition Fischer, Valentin Weis, Robert Thuy, Ben PeerJ Biodiversity Even though a handful of long-lived reptilian clades dominated Mesozoic marine ecosystems, several biotic turnovers drastically changed the taxonomic composition of these communities. A seemingly slow paced, within-geological period turnover took place across the Early–Middle Jurassic transition. This turnover saw the demise of early neoichthyosaurians, rhomaleosaurid plesiosaurians and early plesiosauroids in favour of ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurians and cryptoclidid and pliosaurid plesiosaurians, clades that will dominate the Late Jurassic and, for two of them, the entire Early Cretaceous as well. The fossil record of this turnover is however extremely poor and this change of dominance appears to be spread across the entire middle Toarcian–Bathonian interval. We describe a series of ichthyosaurian and plesiosaurian specimens from successive geological formations in Luxembourg and Belgium that detail the evolution of marine reptile assemblages across the Early–Middle Jurassic transition within a single area, the Belgo–Luxembourgian sub-basin. These fossils reveal the continuing dominance of large rhomaleosaurid plesiosaurians, microcleidid plesiosaurians and Temnodontosaurus-like ichthyosaurians up to the latest Toarcian, indicating that the structuration of the upper tier of Western Europe marine ecosystems remained essentially constant up to the very end of the Early Jurassic. These fossils also suddenly record ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurians and cryptoclidid plesiosaurians by the early Bajocian. These results from a geographically-restricted area provide a clearer picture of the shape of the marine reptile turnover occurring at the early–Middle Jurassic transition. This event appears restricted to the sole Aalenian stage, reducing the uncertainty of its duration, at least for ichthyosaurians and plesiosaurians, to 4 instead of 14 million years. PeerJ Inc. 2021-02-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7906043/ /pubmed/33665003 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10647 Text en © 2021 Fischer et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://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 Biodiversity
Fischer, Valentin
Weis, Robert
Thuy, Ben
Refining the marine reptile turnover at the Early–Middle Jurassic transition
title Refining the marine reptile turnover at the Early–Middle Jurassic transition
title_full Refining the marine reptile turnover at the Early–Middle Jurassic transition
title_fullStr Refining the marine reptile turnover at the Early–Middle Jurassic transition
title_full_unstemmed Refining the marine reptile turnover at the Early–Middle Jurassic transition
title_short Refining the marine reptile turnover at the Early–Middle Jurassic transition
title_sort refining the marine reptile turnover at the early–middle jurassic transition
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7906043/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33665003
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10647
work_keys_str_mv AT fischervalentin refiningthemarinereptileturnoverattheearlymiddlejurassictransition
AT weisrobert refiningthemarinereptileturnoverattheearlymiddlejurassictransition
AT thuyben refiningthemarinereptileturnoverattheearlymiddlejurassictransition