Preservation of early Tonian macroalgal fossils from the Dolores Creek Formation, Yukon.

Autor: Maloney KM; Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, L5L 1C6, Canada. katie.maloney@mail.utoronto.ca., Schiffbauer JD; Department of Geological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA.; X-Ray Microanalysis Core, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA., Halverson GP; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences/GEOTOP, McGill University, Montréal, QC, H3A 0E8, Canada., Xiao S; Department of Geosciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA., Laflamme M; Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, L5L 1C6, Canada.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Scientific reports [Sci Rep] 2022 Apr 13; Vol. 12 (1), pp. 6222. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Apr 13.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-10223-x
Abstrakt: The rise of eukaryotic macroalgae in the late Mesoproterozoic to early Neoproterozoic was a critical development in Earth's history that triggered dramatic changes in biogeochemical cycles and benthic habitats, ultimately resulting in ecosystems habitable to animals. However, evidence of the diversification and expansion of macroalgae is limited by a biased fossil record. Non-mineralizing organisms are rarely preserved, occurring only in exceptional environments that favor fossilization. Investigating the taphonomy of well-preserved macroalgae will aid in identifying these target environments, allowing ecological trends to be disentangled from taphonomic overprints. Here we describe the taphonomy of macroalgal fossils from the Tonian Dolores Creek Formation (ca. 950 Ma) of northwestern Canada (Yukon Territory) that preserves cm-scale macroalgae. Analytical microscopy, including scanning electron microscopy and tomographic x-ray microscopy, was used to investigate fossil preservation, which was the result of a combination of pyritization and aluminosilicification, similar to accessory mineralization observed in Paleozoic Burgess Shale-type fossils. These new Neoproterozoic fossils help to bridge a gap in the fossil record of early algae, offer a link between the fossil and molecular record, and provide new insights into evolution during the Tonian Period, when many eukaryotic lineages are predicted to have diversified.
(© 2022. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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