Body-size increase in crinoids following the end-Devonian mass extinction.

ABSTRACT: The Devonian period ended with one of the largest mass extinctions in the Earth history. It comprised a series of separate events, which eliminated many marine species and led to long-term post-extinction reduction in body size in some groups. Surprisingly, crinoids were largely unaffected by these extinction events in terms of diversity. To date, however, no study examined the long-term body-size trends of crinoids over this crucial time interval. Here we compiled the first comprehensive data sets of sizes of calyces for 262 crinoid genera from the Frasnian-Visean. We found that crinoids have not experienced long-term reduction in body size after the so-called Hangenberg event. Instead, size distributions of calyces show temporal heterogeneity in the variance, with an increase in both the

SUBMITTER: Brom KR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6018515 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature