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.
Preview |
Text
Walker_s12916-024-03351-w.pdf Download (2MB) | Preview |
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.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | New occurrences of the bone-eating worm Osedax in Late Cretaceous marine reptiles and implications for its biogeography and diversification |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rspb.2023.2830 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.2830 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 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. |
| Keywords: | bioerosion, biogeography, Cretaceous, marine reptiles, Osedax, Western Interior Seaway |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Earth Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10188862 |
Loading...
Loading...Loading...Loading...Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
