Ancient origin of the modern deep-sea fauna
| Online Access: |
 Get full textdoi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0046913 |
|---|---|
| Author(s): | Thuy, Ben; Gale, Andy S.; Kroh, Andreas; Kucera, Michal; Numberger-Thuy, Lea D.; Reich, Mike; Stohr, Sabine |
| Author Affiliation(s): |
Primary: University of Göttingen, Department of Geobiology, Gottingen, Germany Other: University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom Natural History Museum Vienna, Austria University of Bremen, Germany Swedish Museum of Natural History, Sweden |
| Volume Title: | PloS One |
| Source: | PloS One, 2012(E46913). Publisher: Public Library of Science, San Francisco, CA, United States. ISSN: 1932-6203 |
| Note: | In English. 51 refs.; illus., incl. 2 tables |
| Summary: | The origin and possible antiquity of the spectacularly diverse modern deep-sea fauna has been debated since the beginning of deep-sea research in the mid-nineteenth century. Recent hypotheses, based on biogeographic patterns and molecular clock estimates, support a latest Mesozoic or early Cenozoic date for the origin of key groups of the present deep-sea fauna (echinoids, octopods). This relatively young age is consistent with hypotheses that argue for extensive extinction during Jurassic and Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs) and the mid-Cenozoic cooling of deep-water masses, implying repeated re-colonization by immigration of taxa from shallow-water habitats. Here we report on a well-preserved echinoderm assemblage from deep-sea (1000-1500 m paleodepth) sediments of the NE-Atlantic of Early Cretaceous age (114 Ma). The assemblage is strikingly similar to that of extant bathyal echinoderm communities in composition, including families and genera found exclusively in modern deep-sea habitats. A number of taxa found in the assemblage have no fossil record at shelf depths postdating the assemblage, which precludes the possibility of deep-sea recolonization from shallow habitats following episodic extinction at least for those groups. Our discovery provides the first key fossil evidence that a significant part of the modern deep-sea fauna is considerably older than previously assumed. As a consequence, most major paleoceanographic events had far less impact on the diversity of deep-sea faunas than has been implied. It also suggests that deep-sea biota are more resilient to extinction events than shallow-water forms, and that the unusual deep-sea environment, indeed, provides evolutionary stability which is very rarely punctuated on macroevolutionary time scales. |
| Year of Publication: | 2012 |
| Research Program: |
ODP Ocean Drilling Program |
| Key Words: | 10 Paleontology, Invertebrate; Asteroidea; Asterozoa; Atlantic Ocean; Biodiversity; Biologic evolution; Blake Nose; Blake Plateau; Cretaceous; Crinoidea; Crinozoa; Deep-sea environment; Echinodermata; Echinoidea; Echinozoa; Faunal studies; Holothuroidea; Invertebrata; Leg 171B; Lower Cretaceous; Marine environment; Mass extinctions; Mesozoic; Morphology; North Atlantic; ODP Site 1049; Ocean Drilling Program; Ophiuroidea; Paleoecology; Paleoenvironment; Quantitative analysis; Stelleroidea |
| Coordinates: |
N300832
N300832
W0760644
W0760644 |
| Record ID: | 2013017864 |
| Copyright Information: | GeoRef, Copyright 2020 American Geosciences Institute. |