Stable isotopic characterization of a coastal floodplain forest community: a case study for isotopic reconstruction of Mesozoic vertebrate assemblages.

ABSTRACT: Stable isotopes are powerful tools for elucidating ecological trends in extant vertebrate communities, though their application to Mesozoic ecosystems is complicated by a lack of extant isotope data from comparable environments/ecosystems (e.g. coastal floodplain forest environments, lacking significant C4 plant components). We sampled 20 taxa across a broad phylogenetic, body size, and physiological scope from the Atchafalaya River Basin of Louisiana as an environmental analogue to the Late Cretaceous coastal floodplains of North America. Samples were analysed for stable carbon, oxygen and nitrogen isotope compositions from bioapatite and keratin tissues to test the degree of ecological resolution that can be determined in a system with similar environmental conditions, and using similar

SUBMITTER: Cullen TM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6408390 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature