University of Chicago, 1025 East 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Science. 2010 Feb 19;327(5968):990-3. doi: 10.1126/science.1184743.
Large-bodied suspension feeders (planktivores), which include the most massive animals to have ever lived, are conspicuously absent from Mesozoic marine environments. The only clear representatives of this trophic guild in the Mesozoic have been an enigmatic and apparently short-lived Jurassic group of extinct pachycormid fishes. Here, we report several new examples of these giant bony fishes from Asia, Europe, and North America. These fossils provide the first detailed anatomical information on this poorly understood clade and extend its range from the lower Middle Jurassic to the end of the Cretaceous, showing that this group persisted for more than 100 million years. Modern large-bodied, planktivorous vertebrates diversified after the extinction of pachycormids at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, which is consistent with an opportunistic refilling of vacated ecospace.
大体型悬浮食者（滤食者），包括曾经存在过的最大型动物，在中生代海洋环境中明显缺失。中生代这种营养阶层唯一明确的代表是一个神秘且显然短暂存在的已灭绝的侏罗纪厚皮鱼群。在这里，我们报告了来自亚洲、欧洲和北美的几个这种巨型硬骨鱼类的新例子。这些化石提供了对这个了解甚少的分支的第一个详细的解剖学信息，并将其范围从中侏罗世早期延伸到白垩纪末期，表明这个群体持续了超过 1 亿年。现代大体型、滤食性脊椎动物在白垩纪-古近纪之交的厚皮鱼类灭绝后多样化，这与被废弃的生态位的机会主义再填充是一致的。
