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Evidence for high-performance suction feeding in the Pennsylvanian stem-group holocephalan Iniopera

The Carboniferous (358.9 to 298.9 Ma) saw the emergence of marine ecosystems dominated by modern vertebrate groups, including abundant stem-group holocephalans (chimaeras and relatives). Compared with the handful of anatomically conservative holocephalan genera alive today—demersal durophages all—th...

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Autores principales: Dearden, Richard P., Herrel, Anthony, Pradel, Alan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9942859/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36649436
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2207854119
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author Dearden, Richard P.
Herrel, Anthony
Pradel, Alan
author_facet Dearden, Richard P.
Herrel, Anthony
Pradel, Alan
author_sort Dearden, Richard P.
collection PubMed
description The Carboniferous (358.9 to 298.9 Ma) saw the emergence of marine ecosystems dominated by modern vertebrate groups, including abundant stem-group holocephalans (chimaeras and relatives). Compared with the handful of anatomically conservative holocephalan genera alive today—demersal durophages all—these animals were astonishingly morphologically diverse, and bizarre anatomies in groups such as iniopterygians hint at specialized ecological roles foreshadowing those of the later, suction-feeding neopterygians. However, flattened fossils usually obscure these animals’ functional morphologies and how they fitted into these important early ecosystems. Here, we use three-dimensional (3D) methods to show that the musculoskeletal anatomy of the uniquely 3D-preserved iniopterygian Iniopera can be best interpreted as being similar to that of living holocephalans rather than elasmobranchs but that it was mechanically unsuited to durophagy. Rather, Iniopera had a small, anteriorly oriented mouth aperture, expandable pharynx, and strong muscular links among the pectoral girdle, neurocranium, and ventral pharynx consistent with high-performance suction feeding, something exhibited by no living holocephalan and never clearly characterized in any of the extinct members of the holocephalan stem-group. Remarkably, in adapting a distinctly holocephalan anatomy to suction feeding, Iniopera is more comparable to modern tetrapod suction feeders than to the more closely related high-performance suction-feeding elasmobranchs. This raises questions about the assumed role of durophagy in the evolution of holocephalans’ distinctive anatomy and offers a rare glimpse into the breadth of ecological niches filled by holocephalans in a pre-neopterygian world.
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spelling pubmed-99428592023-02-22 Evidence for high-performance suction feeding in the Pennsylvanian stem-group holocephalan Iniopera Dearden, Richard P. Herrel, Anthony Pradel, Alan Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences The Carboniferous (358.9 to 298.9 Ma) saw the emergence of marine ecosystems dominated by modern vertebrate groups, including abundant stem-group holocephalans (chimaeras and relatives). Compared with the handful of anatomically conservative holocephalan genera alive today—demersal durophages all—these animals were astonishingly morphologically diverse, and bizarre anatomies in groups such as iniopterygians hint at specialized ecological roles foreshadowing those of the later, suction-feeding neopterygians. However, flattened fossils usually obscure these animals’ functional morphologies and how they fitted into these important early ecosystems. Here, we use three-dimensional (3D) methods to show that the musculoskeletal anatomy of the uniquely 3D-preserved iniopterygian Iniopera can be best interpreted as being similar to that of living holocephalans rather than elasmobranchs but that it was mechanically unsuited to durophagy. Rather, Iniopera had a small, anteriorly oriented mouth aperture, expandable pharynx, and strong muscular links among the pectoral girdle, neurocranium, and ventral pharynx consistent with high-performance suction feeding, something exhibited by no living holocephalan and never clearly characterized in any of the extinct members of the holocephalan stem-group. Remarkably, in adapting a distinctly holocephalan anatomy to suction feeding, Iniopera is more comparable to modern tetrapod suction feeders than to the more closely related high-performance suction-feeding elasmobranchs. This raises questions about the assumed role of durophagy in the evolution of holocephalans’ distinctive anatomy and offers a rare glimpse into the breadth of ecological niches filled by holocephalans in a pre-neopterygian world. National Academy of Sciences 2023-01-17 2023-01-24 /pmc/articles/PMC9942859/ /pubmed/36649436 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2207854119 Text en Copyright © 2023 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Biological Sciences
Dearden, Richard P.
Herrel, Anthony
Pradel, Alan
Evidence for high-performance suction feeding in the Pennsylvanian stem-group holocephalan Iniopera
title Evidence for high-performance suction feeding in the Pennsylvanian stem-group holocephalan Iniopera
title_full Evidence for high-performance suction feeding in the Pennsylvanian stem-group holocephalan Iniopera
title_fullStr Evidence for high-performance suction feeding in the Pennsylvanian stem-group holocephalan Iniopera
title_full_unstemmed Evidence for high-performance suction feeding in the Pennsylvanian stem-group holocephalan Iniopera
title_short Evidence for high-performance suction feeding in the Pennsylvanian stem-group holocephalan Iniopera
title_sort evidence for high-performance suction feeding in the pennsylvanian stem-group holocephalan iniopera
topic Biological Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9942859/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36649436
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2207854119
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