A. Pérez-García, M.T. Antunes, F. Barroso-Barcenilla, P.M. Callapez, M. Segura, A.F. Soares & A. Torices (2017)
A bothremydid from the middle Cenomanian of Portugal identified as one of the oldest pleurodiran turtles in Laurasia.
Cretaceous Research (advance online publication)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cretres.2017.05.031
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019566711730099X
Highlights
A turtle shell from the middle Cenomanian of Nazaré (Portugal) is studied here.
It corresponds to the second member of Bothremydidae identified in Portugal.
It is one of the scarce bothremydid remains known in pre-Santonian Laurasian levels.
It corresponds to Algorachelus, the oldest Bothremydidae in the Laurasian record.
The oldest known dispersal event of Pleurodira to Laurasia is better understood.
Abstract
The relatively complete and well preserved shell of a turtle, from the middle Cenomanian of Nazaré (Portugal), is studied here. It is recognized as a member of the crown group Pleurodira and, more specifically, the Bothremydidae. Pleurodira are one of the two lineages of modern turtles, their origin being in Gondwana. Pleurodira are very abundant in the uppermost Cretaceous record of Europe. However, this new finding is one of the few occurrences in the lower Upper Cretaceous of Laurasia. A single member of Bothremydidae had so far been identified in Portugal: the late Campanian-early Maastrichtian Rosasia soutoi. It is the only Cretaceous turtle that is endemic to that country both at specific and at generic levels, being exclusive of Portugal. The taxon from Nazaré is identified as Algorachelus peregrinus, this form is also present in the contemporaneous beds in Spain, and is the oldest member of Bothremydidae in Laurasia. Algorachelus peregrinus is confirmed here to be a coastal form, which facilitated its spread. The two oldest known bothremydids from Laurasia, the European A. peregrinus and the North American Paiutemys tibert, are compared for the first time. They are recognized as closely related taxa. This study provides new data allowing a more precisely characterization of the oldest so far known dispersal event of Pleurodira in Laurasia, which was performed by an African lineage of Bothremydidae that reached the east coast of the Atlantic Ocean at least in the middle Cenomanian, and the west region of that Ocean at least in the late Cenomanian.
J.H.F.L. Davies, A. Marzoli, H. Bertrand, N. Youbi, M. Ernesto & U. Schaltegger (2017)
End-Triassic mass extinction started by intrusive CAMP activity.
Nature Communications 8, Article number: 15596 (2017)
doi:10.1038/ncomms15596
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15596
The end-Triassic extinction is one of the Phanerozoic’s largest mass extinctions. This extinction is typically attributed to climate change associated with degassing of basalt flows from the central Atlantic magmatic province (CAMP). However, recent work suggests that the earliest known CAMP basalts occur above the extinction horizon and that climatic and biotic changes began before the earliest known CAMP eruptions. Here we present new high-precision U-Pb ages from CAMP mafic intrusive units, showing that magmatic activity was occurring ∼100 Kyr ago before the earliest known eruptions. We correlate the early magmatic activity with the onset of changes to the climatic and biotic records. We also report ages from sills in an organic rich sedimentary basin in Brazil that intrude synchronously with the extinction suggesting that degassing of these organics contributed to the climate change which drove the extinction. Our results indicate that the intrusive record from large igneous provinces may be more important for linking to mass extinctions than the eruptive record.