Hubei Institute of Geosciences, Hubei Geological Bureau, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Earth Science, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan, Hubei, China.
PeerJ. 2024 Sep 13;12:e18011. doi: 10.7717/peerj.18011. eCollection 2024.
The Early Triassic Nanzhang-Yuan'an Lagerstätte of Hubei Province, South China, preserves abundant marine reptiles in the uppermost part of the Jialingjiang Formation and provides detailed insights into marine organisms, including newly discovered and well preserved conodont clusters of the Family Ellisonidae. These conodont elements allow us to assess the bias introduced during the acquisition process. We examined conodont elements preserved on the bedding planes and those acquired after the acid-dissolving method to analyze their attributes and length distributions. We identified a biased preservation of different conodont elements related to their morphologies. After the acid-dissolving procedures, the bias increased, and all different elements were affected, with larger individuals being particularly prone to destruction. Among them, the P elements of Ellisonidae were the least affected, while the S elements were the most affected. This study further indicates that paleobiological interpretations based on fossil size or morphology could be obscured if the influence of post-mortem effect is ignored.
中国南方湖北省早三叠世南漳-远安生物群保存在嘉陵江组上部的大量海洋爬行动物，并为海洋生物提供了详细的见解，包括新发现的和保存完好的 Ellisonidae 科牙形石簇。这些牙形石元素使我们能够评估在获取过程中引入的偏差。我们检查了保存在层面上的牙形石元素和经过酸溶解方法获得的牙形石元素，以分析它们的属性和长度分布。我们确定了与形态相关的不同牙形石元素的有偏差的保存。在酸溶解处理后，偏差增加，所有不同的元素都受到影响，较大的个体尤其容易受到破坏。其中，Ellisonidae 的 P 元素受影响最小，而 S 元素受影响最大。本研究进一步表明，如果忽略死后效应的影响，基于化石大小或形态的古生物学解释可能会受到干扰。
