eprintid: 10188862 rev_number: 13 eprint_status: archive userid: 699 dir: disk0/10/18/88/62 datestamp: 2024-03-12 12:42:45 lastmod: 2024-08-02 14:47:25 status_changed: 2024-08-02 14:47:25 type: article metadata_visibility: show sword_depositor: 699 creators_name: Jamison-Todd, Sarah creators_name: Mannion, Philip creators_name: Glover, Adrian creators_name: Upchurch, Paul title: New occurrences of the bone-eating worm Osedax in Late Cretaceous marine reptiles and implications for its biogeography and diversification ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B04 divisions: C06 divisions: F57 keywords: bioerosion, biogeography, Cretaceous, marine reptiles, Osedax, Western Interior Seaway note: © 2024 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. abstract: The bone-eating worm Osedax is a speciose and globally distributed clade, primarily found on whale carcasses in marine environments. The earliest fossil evidence for Osedax borings was previously described in plesiosaur and sea turtle bones from the mid-Cretaceous of the United Kingdom, representing the only unequivocal pre-Oligocene occurrences. Confirming through CT scanning, we present new evidence of Osedax borings in three plesiosaur specimens and, for the first time, identify borings in two mosasaur specimens. All specimens are from the Late Cretaceous: one from the Cenomanian of the United Kingdom, two from the Campanian of the southeastern United States, and two from the Maastrichtian of Belgium. This extends the geographic range of Osedax in the Cretaceous to both sides of the northern Atlantic Ocean. The bones contain five borehole morphotypes, potentially created by different species of Osedax, with the Cenomanian specimen containing three morphotypes within a single tooth. This combined evidence of heightened species diversity by the Cenomanian and broad geographic range by the Campanian potentially indicates an earlier origin and diversification for this clade than previously hypothesized. Preservational biases indicate that Osedax was probably even more widely distributed and speciose in the Cretaceous than apparent in the fossil record. date: 2024-04-10 date_type: published publisher: Royal Society, The official_url: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.2830 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 2256570 doi: 10.1098/rspb.2023.2830 lyricists_name: Mannion, Philip lyricists_id: PDMAN77 actors_name: Mannion, Philip actors_id: PDMAN77 actors_role: owner funding_acknowledgements: UF160216, URF\R\221010 [Royal Society] full_text_status: public publication: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences volume: 291 article_number: 20232830 issn: 1471-2954 citation: Jamison-Todd, Sarah; Mannion, Philip; Glover, Adrian; Upchurch, Paul; (2024) New occurrences of the bone-eating worm Osedax in Late Cretaceous marine reptiles and implications for its biogeography and diversification. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , 291 , Article 20232830. 10.1098/rspb.2023.2830 <https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.2830>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10188862/7/Walker_s12916-024-03351-w.pdf