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Calcium Isotopic Evidence for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem Structure Prior to the K/Pg Extinction.Curr Biol. 2017 Jun 05; 27(11):1641-1644.e2.CB
Abstract
The collapse of marine ecosystems during the end-Cretaceous mass extinction involved the base of the food chain [1] up to ubiquitous vertebrate apex predators [2-5]. Large marine reptiles became suddenly extinct at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary, whereas other contemporaneous groups such as bothremydid turtles or dyrosaurid crocodylomorphs, although affected at the familial, genus, or species level, survived into post-crisis environments of the Paleocene [5-9] and could have found refuge in freshwater habitats [10-12]. A recent hypothesis proposes that the extinction of plesiosaurians and mosasaurids could have been caused by an important drop in sea level [13]. Mosasaurids are unusually diverse and locally abundant in the Maastrichtian phosphatic deposits of Morocco, and with large sharks and one species of elasmosaurid plesiosaurian recognized so far, contribute to an overabundance of apex predators [3, 7, 14, 15]. For this reason, high local diversity of marine reptiles exhibiting different body masses and a wealth of tooth morphologies hints at complex trophic interactions within this latest Cretaceous marine ecosystem. Using calcium isotopes, we investigated the trophic structure of this extinct assemblage. Our results are consistent with a calcium isotope pattern observed in modern marine ecosystems and show that plesiosaurians and mosasaurids indiscriminately fall in the tertiary piscivore group. This suggests that marine reptile apex predators relied onto a single dietary calcium source, compatible with the vulnerable wasp-waist food webs of the modern world [16]. This inferred peculiar ecosystem structure may help explain plesiosaurian and mosasaurid extinction following the end-Cretaceous biological crisis.
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MeSH
Pub Type(s)
Journal Article
Language
eng
PubMed ID
28552352
Citation
Martin, Jeremy E., et al. "Calcium Isotopic Evidence for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem Structure Prior to the K/Pg Extinction." Current Biology : CB, vol. 27, no. 11, 2017, pp. 1641-1644.e2.
Martin JE, Vincent P, Tacail T, et al. Calcium Isotopic Evidence for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem Structure Prior to the K/Pg Extinction. Curr Biol. 2017;27(11):1641-1644.e2.
Martin, J. E., Vincent, P., Tacail, T., Khaldoune, F., Jourani, E., Bardet, N., & Balter, V. (2017). Calcium Isotopic Evidence for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem Structure Prior to the K/Pg Extinction. Current Biology : CB, 27(11), 1641-e2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.04.043
Martin JE, et al. Calcium Isotopic Evidence for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem Structure Prior to the K/Pg Extinction. Curr Biol. 2017 Jun 5;27(11):1641-1644.e2. PubMed PMID: 28552352.
* Article titles in AMA citation format should be in sentence-case
TY - JOUR
T1 - Calcium Isotopic Evidence for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem Structure Prior to the K/Pg Extinction.
AU - Martin,Jeremy E,
AU - Vincent,Peggy,
AU - Tacail,Théo,
AU - Khaldoune,Fatima,
AU - Jourani,Essaid,
AU - Bardet,Nathalie,
AU - Balter,Vincent,
Y1 - 2017/05/25/
PY - 2017/03/01/received
PY - 2017/04/06/revised
PY - 2017/04/20/accepted
PY - 2017/5/30/pubmed
PY - 2018/8/17/medline
PY - 2017/5/30/entrez
KW - Cretaceous
KW - calcium isotopes
KW - marine ecosystem
KW - marine reptiles
KW - mass extinction
KW - non-traditional isotopes
KW - paleoecology
KW - wasp-waist food web
SP - 1641
EP - 1644.e2
JF - Current biology : CB
JO - Curr Biol
VL - 27
IS - 11
N2 - The collapse of marine ecosystems during the end-Cretaceous mass extinction involved the base of the food chain [1] up to ubiquitous vertebrate apex predators [2-5]. Large marine reptiles became suddenly extinct at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary, whereas other contemporaneous groups such as bothremydid turtles or dyrosaurid crocodylomorphs, although affected at the familial, genus, or species level, survived into post-crisis environments of the Paleocene [5-9] and could have found refuge in freshwater habitats [10-12]. A recent hypothesis proposes that the extinction of plesiosaurians and mosasaurids could have been caused by an important drop in sea level [13]. Mosasaurids are unusually diverse and locally abundant in the Maastrichtian phosphatic deposits of Morocco, and with large sharks and one species of elasmosaurid plesiosaurian recognized so far, contribute to an overabundance of apex predators [3, 7, 14, 15]. For this reason, high local diversity of marine reptiles exhibiting different body masses and a wealth of tooth morphologies hints at complex trophic interactions within this latest Cretaceous marine ecosystem. Using calcium isotopes, we investigated the trophic structure of this extinct assemblage. Our results are consistent with a calcium isotope pattern observed in modern marine ecosystems and show that plesiosaurians and mosasaurids indiscriminately fall in the tertiary piscivore group. This suggests that marine reptile apex predators relied onto a single dietary calcium source, compatible with the vulnerable wasp-waist food webs of the modern world [16]. This inferred peculiar ecosystem structure may help explain plesiosaurian and mosasaurid extinction following the end-Cretaceous biological crisis.
SN - 1879-0445
UR - https://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline/citation/28552352/Calcium_Isotopic_Evidence_for_Vulnerable_Marine_Ecosystem_Structure_Prior_to_the_K/Pg_Extinction_
L2 - https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0960-9822(17)30487-6
DB - PRIME
DP - Unbound Medicine
ER -
