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Are the most durable shelly taxa also the most common in the marine fossil record?

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/120176

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Title: Are the most durable shelly taxa also the most common in the marine fossil record?
Related: Paleobiology, Vol. 31, Issue 4 (2005), p.607-623
DOI: 10.1666/04023.1
Publisher: Paleontological Society
Date: 2005
FoR/RFCD Code(s): 040300 Geology 060200 Ecology
Author/Creator: Behrensmeyer, Anna K
Author/Creator: Fürsich, Franz T
Author/Creator: Gastaldo, Robert A
Author/Creator: Kidwell, Susan M
Author/Creator: Kosnik, Matthew A
Author/Creator: Kowalewski, Michal
Author/Creator: Plotnick, Roy E
Author/Creator: Rogers, Raymond R
Author/Creator: Alroy, John
Description: This paper tests whether the most common fossil brachiopod, gastropod, and bivalve genera also have intrinsically more durable shells. Commonness was quantified using occurrence frequency of the 450 most frequently occurring genera of these groups in the Paleobiology Database (PBDB). Durability was scored for each taxon on the basis of shell size, thickness, reinforcement (ribs, folds, spines), mineralogy, and microstructural organic content. Contrary to taphonomic expectation, common genera in the PBDB are as likely to be small, thin-shelled, and unreinforced as large, thick-shelled, ribbed, folded, or spiny. In fact, only six of the 30 tests we performed showed a statistically significant relationship between durability and occurrence frequency, and these six tests were equally divided in supporting or contradicting the taphonomic expectation. Thus, for the most commonly occurring genera in these three important groups, taphonomic effects are either neutral with respect to durability or compensated for by other factors (e.g., less durable taxa were more common in the original communities). These results suggest that biological information is retained in the occurrence frequency patterns of our target groups.
Description: 17 page(s)
Subject Keyword: 040300 Geology
Subject Keyword: 060200 Ecology
Resource Type: journal article
Organisation: Macquarie University. Dept. of Biological Sciences

Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/120176
Identifier: ISSN:0094-8373
Identifier: mq-rm-2009011229
Language: eng
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