See more from this Division: Topical Sessions
See more from this Session: Recoveries from Mass Extinction: Patterns, Processes, and Comparisons I
Abstract:
Brachiopod communities were sampled from Paul Copper's Anticosti Island collection. Anticosti Island is the most complete, shallow water, fossiliferous record of the Ordovician-Silurian boundary in North America. Upper Ordovician through lowermost Silurian samples were collected from limestone surfaces that showed no evidence of taphonomic overprinting. Individuals were identified to the species level; abundance and biovolume data were collected. RACs were generated for every sample with species richness greater than two. The frequency of communities dominated by one taxon was compared to the kurtosis of the RACs within each unit.
The units below each extinction pulse show increasing stress; while units following the extinction pulses have significantly lower stress (t-test, p<0.05). The frequency of communities dominated by one taxon shows the same pattern as average kurtosis. While the taxonomic recovery has not been identified until the Middle Silurian, there is an ecological recovery relatively quickly after each extinction pulse. These findings support previous qualitative work that suggests that the ecological impact of the Ordovician extinction is not as severe as the taxonomic impact. RACs have been used successfully in modern systems; our results suggest this technique can also be applied to the fossil record to understand the progression of and recovery from extinction events better.
See more from this Division: Topical Sessions
See more from this Session: Recoveries from Mass Extinction: Patterns, Processes, and Comparisons I