Vertebrate Palentology

Tetrapod biodiversity today is great; over the past 400 Myr since vertebrates moved onto land, global tetrapod diversity has risen exponentially, punctuated by losses during major extinctions. There are links between the total global diversity of tetrapods and the diversity of their ecological roles, yet no one fully understands the interplay of these two aspects of biodiversity and a numerical analysis of this relationship has not so far been undertaken. Here we show that the global taxonomic and ecological diversity of tetrapods are closely linked. Throughout geological time, patterns of global diversity of tetrapod families show 97 per cent correlation with ecological modes. Global taxonomic and ecological diversity of this group correlates closely with the dominant classes of tetrapods (amphibians in the Palaeozoic, reptiles in the Mesozoic, birds and mammals in the Cenozoic). These groups have driven ecological diversity by expansion and contraction of occupied ecospace, rather than by direct competition within existing ecospace and each group has used ecospace at a greater rate than their predecessors.

2016. The Late Triassic and Early Jurassic fissure faunas from Bristol and South Wales: Stratigraphy and setting. Palaeontologia Polonica 67, 257–287. The famous vertebrate-bearing fissures of the Bristol area in southwest England and in south Wales were traditionally referred to " upland " environmental settings, and assigned an overall time range of some 60 Myr; we reject both of these viewpoints. In terms of the environmental setting, based upon the evidence of palaeogeography, sediments, and fossils, we show that all the Triassic-aged fissures were near-coastal and embedded in karst formed on palaeo-islands in a subtropical archipelago. Further, the dates of these fissure fills in both regions do not span the Carnian to Rhaetian, as commonly supposed, but instead they are probably all Rhaetian. We update information on the Charles Moore Holwell " Microlestes " fissure assemblage and demonstrate that the marine fauna confirms a Rhaetian age. As proposed by previous authors , younger fissure fills around the St. Brides area of South Wales were also formed on an island, but during the Hettangian–Sinemurian. The youngest fissure deposit in the region is Pliensbachian. The age range of the fissures thus shrinks to c. 20 Myr, and the first episode of tetrapod fissure infilling shifts from the time of the Carnian " pluvial " episode, to the early Rhaetian, when western Europe was undergoing major rifting associated with the beginning of the opening of the North Atlantic, and when the Rhaetian sea flooded over landscapes that had long been purely terrestrial and arid. We recognise clear changes in the faunal composition of the terrestrial vertebrate biota from the early Rhaetian, dominated by reptile taxa, with some mammaliamorphs, that then declined rapidly in diversity before the Hettangian. This herpe-tofauna was followed by three faunal assemblages in the Early Jurassic of St. Brides which became increasingly diverse following the end-Triassic mass extinction; each had prominent mammaliamorphs as well as high numbers, but few species, of rhynchocephalians.

2016. The Late Triassic and Early Jurassic fissure faunas from Bristol and South Wales: Stratigraphy and setting. Palaeontologia Polonica 67, 257–287. The famous vertebrate-bearing fissures of the Bristol area in southwest England and in south Wales were traditionally referred to " upland " environmental settings, and assigned an overall time range of some 60 Myr; we reject both of these viewpoints. In terms of the environmental setting, based upon the evidence of palaeogeography, sediments, and fossils, we show that all the Triassic-aged fissures were near-coastal and embedded in karst formed on palaeo-islands in a subtropical archipelago. Further, the dates of these fissure fills in both regions do not span the Carnian to Rhaetian, as commonly supposed, but instead they are probably all Rhaetian. We update information on the Charles Moore Holwell " Microlestes " fissure assemblage and demonstrate that the marine fauna confirms a Rhaetian age. As proposed by pre...

2016. The Late Triassic and Early Jurassic fissure faunas from Bristol and South Wales: Stratigraphy and setting. Palaeontologia Polonica 67, 257–287. The famous vertebrate-bearing fissures of the Bristol area in southwest England and in south Wales were traditionally referred to " upland " environmental settings, and assigned an overall time range of some 60 Myr; we reject both of these viewpoints. In terms of the environmental setting, based upon the evidence of palaeogeography, sediments, and fossils, we show that all the Triassic-aged fissures were near-coastal and embedded in karst formed on palaeo-islands in a subtropical archipelago. Further, the dates of these fissure fills in both regions do not span the Carnian to Rhaetian, as commonly supposed, but instead they are probably all Rhaetian. We update information on the Charles Moore Holwell " Microlestes " fissure assemblage and demonstrate that the marine fauna confirms a Rhaetian age. As proposed by pre...

The end-Permian mass extinction, 251 million years (Myr) ago, was the most devastating ecological event of all time, and it was exacerbated by two earlier events at the beginning and end of the Guadalupian, 270 and 260 Myr ago. Ecosystems were destroyed worldwide, communities were restructured and organisms were left struggling to recover. Disaster taxa, such as Lystrosaurus, insinuated themselves into almost every corner of the sparsely populated landscape in the earliest Triassic, and a quick taxonomic recovery apparently occurred on a global scale. However, close study of ecosystem evolution shows that true ecological recovery was slower. After the end-Guadalupian event, faunas began rebuilding complex trophic structures and refilling guilds, but were hit again by the end-Permian event. Taxonomic diversity at the alpha (community) level did not recover to pre-extinction levels; it reached only a low plateau after each pulse and continued low into the Late Triassic. Our data showed that though there was an initial rise in cosmopolitanism after the extinction pulses, large drops subsequently occurred and, counter-intuitively, a surprisingly low level of cosmopolitanism was sustained through the Early and Middle Triassic.

The famous vertebrate-bearing fissures of the Bristol area in southwest England and in south Wales were traditionally referred to “upland” environmental settings, and assigned an overall time range of some 60 Myr; we reject both of these viewpoints. In terms of the environmental setting, based upon the evidence of palaeogeography, sediments, and fossils, we show that all the Triassic-aged fissures were near-coastal and embedded in karst formed on palaeo-islands in a subtropical archipelago. Further, the dates of these fissure fills in both regions do not span the Carnian to Rhaetian, as commonly supposed, but instead they are probably all Rhaetian. We update information on the Charles Moore Holwell “Microlestes” fissure assemblage and demonstrate that the marine fauna confirms a Rhaetian age. As proposed by previous authors, younger fissure fills around the St. Brides area of South Wales were also formed on an island, but during the Hettangian–Sinemurian. The youngest fissure deposi...

New early Miocene forelimb fossils have been recovered from the Songhor and Lower Kapurtay localities in southwestern Kenya. We describe four specimens that are similar in size and functional capabilities. Their specific allocation is problematic but these forelimb specimens must belong to either Rangwapithecus gordoni or Proconsul africanus. If these new postcranial specimens should belong to R. gordoni, on the basis of size and common dental specimens found at Songhor, they represent a new elbow complex. The morphology of these fossils is anatomically and functionally similar to that of Proconsul. The proconsuloid elbow complex allows extensive forelimb rotations and is capable of performing arboreal quadrupedalism and climbing activities. No suspensory adaptations are apparent. The proconsuloid elbow complex remains a good ancestral condition for hominoid primates.