Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T13:22:35.321Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Discussion of ‘The Triassic U–Pb age for the aquatic long-necked protorosaur of Guizhou, China’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2014

J. Liu*
Affiliation:
School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, China State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, CAS, Nanjing 210008, China; E-mail: [email protected]

Extract

First, I would like to congratulate Wang et al. (2014) for their important work on the dating of the Panxian fauna, a Triassic fossil Lagerstätte that has produced many exquisitely preserved marine reptiles (Motani et al. 2008) and that marks the full recovery of the marine ecosystem (Jiang et al. 2009) following the Permian–Triassic marine mass extinction (PTME). Papers by Wang et al. (2014) and alike are especially welcomed by vertebrate palaeontologists since they provide precise dating results for some of the most important vertebrate fossils in the world, such as the bizarre protorosaur Dinocephalosaurus orientalis (Li, Rieppel & LaBarbera, 2004) and the earliest marine archosaur Qianosuchus mixtus (Li et al. 2006). This related topic is also interesting because of the very recent debate about the timing of recovery from the PTME, the largest biodiversity crash during the Phanerozoic, from the predators’ perspective (Chen & Benton, 2012; Scheyer et al. 2014).

Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Benton, M. J., Zhang, Q., Hu, S., Chen, Z.-Q., Wen, W., Liu, J., Huang, J., Zhou, C., Xie, T., Tong, J. & Choo, B. 2013. Exceptional vertebrate biotas from the Triassic of China, and the expansion of marine ecosystems after the Permo-Triassic mass extinction. Earth-Science Reviews 125, 199243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Z.-Q. & Benton, M. J. 2012. The timing and pattern of biotic recovery following the end-Permian mass extinction. Nature Geoscience 5, 375–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fröbisch, N. B., Fröbisch, J., Sander, P. M., Schmitz, L. & Rieppel, O. 2013. Macropredatory ichthyosaur from the Middle Triassic and the origin of modern trophic networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110, 1393–7.Google Scholar
Gradstein, F. M., Ogg, J. G., Schmitz, M. & Ogg, G. 2012. The Geologic Time Scale 2012. Elsevier.Google Scholar
Hu, S. X., Zhang, Q. Y., Chen, Z. Q., Zhou, C. Y., Lv, T., Xie, T., Wen, W., Huang, J. Y. & Benton, M. J. 2011. The Luoping biota: exceptional preservation, and new evidence on the Triassic recovery from end-Permian mass extinction. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 278, 2274–82.Google Scholar
Jiang, D. Y., Motani, R., Hao, W. C., Rieppel, O., Sun, Y. L., Tintori, A., Sun, Z. Y. & Schmitz, L. 2009. Biodiversity and sequence of the Middle Triassic Panxian marine reptile fauna, Guizhou Province, China. Acta Geologica Sinica 83, 451–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, C., Rieppel, O. & LaBarbera, M. C. 2004. A Triassic aquatic protorosaur with an extremely long neck. Science 305, 1931.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, C., Wu, X. C., Cheng, Y. N., Sato, T. & Wang, L. T. 2006. An unusual archosaurian from the marine Triassic of China. Naturwissenschaften 93, 200–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Massare, J. A. 1987. Tooth morphology and prey preference of Mesozoic marine reptiles. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 7, 121–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Motani, R., Jiang, D. Y., Tintori, A., Sun, Y. L., Hao, W. C., Boyd, A., Hinic-Frlog, S., Schmitz, L., Shin, J. Y. & Sun, Z. Y. 2008. Horizons and assemblages of Middle Triassic marine reptiles from Panxian, Guizhou, China. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 28, 900–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, A. & Geissman, J. 1999. 1999 Geologic Time Scale. Boulder, Colorado: Geological Society of America.Google Scholar
Scheyer, T. M., Romano, C., Jenks, J. & Bucher, H. 2014. Early Triassic marine biotic recovery: the predators’ perspective. PLoS ONE 9, e88987.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sun, Z. Y., Sun, Y. L., Hao, W. C. & Jiang, D. Y. 2006. Conodont evidence for the age of the Panxian Fauna, Guizhou, China. Acta Geologica Sinica 80, 621–30.Google Scholar
Wang, Y., Yang, D., Han, J. L. W., Yao, J. & Liu, D. M. 2014. The Triassic U–Pb age for the aquatic long-necked protorosaur of Guizhou, China. Geological Magazine 151, 749–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar