2014 GSA Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia (19–22 October 2014)

Paper No. 132-7
Presentation Time: 10:30 AM

THE INFLUENCE OF TAPHONOMY ON MAZON CREEK CRUSTACEAN TAXONOMY


MANN, Arjan, Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, 22 Russell Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3B1, Canada, NGUYEN, Christine, Biology, University of Toronto Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Road N, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada and LAFLAMME, Marc, Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Toronto Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada

The Pennsylvanian Mazon Creek (Francis Creek Shale) fossil sites represent a rare instance of exceptional soft-tissue preservation from northeastern Illinois. Rapid burial followed by digenetic encapsulation within siderite concretions allowed for soft-tissue preservation. The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) presently houses an extensive concretion collection, allowing for comprehensive studies of the preservational variance occurring within, and between, species. Over 600 fossils across a broad spectrum of crustaceans were compared. Morphological and Taphonomic matrices were constructed to evaluate the preservational variance on a character-by-character basis, in addition to evaluating the overall preservational quality across hundreds of individuals. From the data, taphonimic trends within species were established showcasing the pervasive influence of preservational biases on taxonomic designations. Based on the taphonomic investigation, a review of Mazon Creek crustacean taxonomy is proposed.

Session No. 132

Paleontology: Taphonomic Processes, Patterns, and Methods (Posters)
Monday, 20 October 2014: 9:00 AM-6:30 PM
Exhibition Hall C (Vancouver Convention Centre-West)
Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 46, No. 6, p.330
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