Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Global ecomorphological restructuring of dominant marine reptiles prior to the K/Pg mass extinction

View ORCID ProfileJamie A. MacLaren, Rebecca F. Bennion, View ORCID ProfileNathalie Bardet, View ORCID ProfileValentin Fischer
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.30.474572
Jamie A. MacLaren
1Evolution & Diversity Dynamics Lab, UR Geology, Université de Liège, 14 Allée du 6 Août, 4000 Liège, Belgium
2Functional Morphology Lab, Department of Biology, Universiteit Antwerpen, Gebouw D, Campus Drie Eiken, Universiteitsplein 1, Wilrijk, 2610 Antwerpen, Belgium
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Jamie A. MacLaren
  • For correspondence: j.maclaren@uliege.be
Rebecca F. Bennion
1Evolution & Diversity Dynamics Lab, UR Geology, Université de Liège, 14 Allée du 6 Août, 4000 Liège, Belgium
3O.D Terre et Histoire de la Vie, Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique, Rue Vautier 29, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Nathalie Bardet
4CR2P, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 8 Rue Buffon, CP38, 75005 Paris, France
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Nathalie Bardet
Valentin Fischer
1Evolution & Diversity Dynamics Lab, UR Geology, Université de Liège, 14 Allée du 6 Août, 4000 Liège, Belgium
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Valentin Fischer
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

ABSTRACT

Mosasaurid squamates were the dominant amniote predators in marine ecosystems during most of the Late Cretaceous. Evidence from multiple sites worldwide of a global mosasaurid community restructuring across the Campanian–Maastrichtian transition may have wide-ranging implications for the evolution of diversity of these top oceanic predators. In this study, we use a suite of biomechanical traits and functionally descriptive ratios to investigate how the morphofunctional disparity of mosasaurids evolved through time and space prior to the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K/Pg) mass extinction. Our results suggest that the worldwide taxonomic turnover in mosasaurid community composition from Campanian to Maastrichtian is reflected by a notable increase in morphofunctional disparity on a global scale, but especially driven the North American record. Ecomorphospace occupation becomes more polarised during the late Maastrichtian, as the morphofunctional disparity of mosasaurids plateaus in the Southern Hemisphere and decreases in the Northern Hemisphere. We show that these changes are not associated with strong modifications in mosasaurid size, but rather with the functional capacities of their skulls, and that mosasaurid morphofunctional disparity was in decline in several provincial communities before the K-Pg mass extinction. Our study highlights region-specific patterns of disparity evolution, and the importance of assessing vertebrate extinctions both globally and regionally. Ecomorphological differentiation in mosasaurid communities, coupled with declines in other formerly abundant marine reptile groups, indicates widespread restructuring of higher trophic levels in marine food webs was well underway when the K-Pg mass extinction took place.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted January 01, 2022.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Global ecomorphological restructuring of dominant marine reptiles prior to the K/Pg mass extinction
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Global ecomorphological restructuring of dominant marine reptiles prior to the K/Pg mass extinction
Jamie A. MacLaren, Rebecca F. Bennion, Nathalie Bardet, Valentin Fischer
bioRxiv 2021.12.30.474572; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.30.474572
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Global ecomorphological restructuring of dominant marine reptiles prior to the K/Pg mass extinction
Jamie A. MacLaren, Rebecca F. Bennion, Nathalie Bardet, Valentin Fischer
bioRxiv 2021.12.30.474572; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.30.474572

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Paleontology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (3505)
  • Biochemistry (7346)
  • Bioengineering (5323)
  • Bioinformatics (20260)
  • Biophysics (10016)
  • Cancer Biology (7743)
  • Cell Biology (11300)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (6437)
  • Ecology (9951)
  • Epidemiology (2065)
  • Evolutionary Biology (13321)
  • Genetics (9361)
  • Genomics (12583)
  • Immunology (7701)
  • Microbiology (19021)
  • Molecular Biology (7441)
  • Neuroscience (41036)
  • Paleontology (300)
  • Pathology (1229)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2137)
  • Physiology (3160)
  • Plant Biology (6860)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1272)
  • Synthetic Biology (1896)
  • Systems Biology (5311)
  • Zoology (1089)