Ecomorphological selectivity among marine teleost fishes during the end-Cretaceous extinction.

ABSTRACT: Despite the attention focused on mass extinction events in the fossil record, patterns of extinction in the dominant group of marine vertebrates-fishes-remain largely unexplored. Here, I demonstrate ecomorphological selectivity among marine teleost fishes during the end-Cretaceous extinction, based on a genus-level dataset that accounts for lineages predicted on the basis of phylogeny but not yet sampled in the fossil record. Two ecologically relevant anatomical features are considered: body size and jaw-closing lever ratio. Extinction intensity is higher for taxa with large body sizes and jaws consistent with speed (rather than force) transmission; resampling tests indicate that victims represent a nonrandom subset of taxa present in the final stage of the Cretaceous. Logistic regressions

SUBMITTER: Friedman M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2664034 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature