The "χ" of the Matter: Testing the Relationship between Paleoenvironments and Three Theropod Clades - PubMed (original) (raw)

The "χ" of the Matter: Testing the Relationship between Paleoenvironments and Three Theropod Clades

Marcos A F Sales et al. PLoS One. 2016.

Erratum in

Abstract

The view of spinosaurs as dinosaurs of semi-aquatic habits and strongly associated with marginal and coastal habitats are deeply rooted in both scientific and popular knowledge, but it was never statistically tested. Inspired by a previous analysis of other dinosaur clades and major paleoenvironmental categories, here we present our own statistical evaluation of the association between coastal and terrestrial paleoenvironments and spinosaurids, along with other two theropod taxa: abelisaurids and carcharodontosaurids. We also included a taphonomic perspective and classified the occurrences in categories related to potential biases in order to better address our interpretations. Our main results can be summarized as follows: 1) the taxon with the largest amount of statistical evidence showing it positively associated to coastal paleoenvironments is Spinosauridae; 2) abelisaurids and carcharodontosaurids had more statistical evidence showing them positively associated with terrestrial paleoenvironments; 3) it is likely that spinosaurids also occupied spatially inland areas in a way somehow comparable at least to carcharodontosaurids; 4) abelisaurids may have been more common than the other two taxa in inland habitats.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1

Fig 1. Global occurrences of Abelisauridae (white circles), Carcharodontosauridae (red lozenges), and Spinosauridae (blue triangles).

From top to bottom: Late Jurassic, Early Cretaceous, and Late Cretaceous paleomaps. For the paleogeographic reconstructions and plotting the occurrences it was used the software Point Tracker [32].

Fig 2

Fig 2. Schematic illustration of the concept of possibly paralogous occurrences.

Consider two distinct localities A and B indicated by dark stars. In a given time t1, A and B are placed in distinct paleoenvironments, coastal and terrestrial, respectively. However, in t3, A and B are part of the same broad ecosystem, so counting these localities as distinct occurrences leads to the overrepresentation of a particular fossil taxon, present in both localities, in this paleoenvironment within the dataset. Thus, distinct localities and occurrences pertaining to the same stratigraphic units and ages and classified as the same broad paleoenvironment are considered as possibly paralogous occurrences. Also, locality B is part of terrestrial paleoecosystems in both t1 and t3, so those paleoecosystems may be the same throughout the time span between t1 and t3. However, as usual, the sedimentary and, consequently, the fossil records may be fragmentary and doubtful (t2), so it is not possible to track the entire paleoenvironmental history of locality B and, hence, be sure if it represents the same paleoenvironment in t1 and t3.

Fig 3

Fig 3. Most frequent associations found between taphonomic categories of each taxon and paleoenvironments in significant tests (3-I, 3-II only for coastal paleoenvironments, 3-III only for terrestrial paleoenvironments, 4-I, and 4-III).

The minus and plus signs inside the circles indicate decreasing and increasing trends regarding associations with a particular paleoenvironment, respectively. The rectangles encompass all possible combinations among taphonomic categories and types of association (if negative or positive), which are represented by the numbers and associated signs, respectively. The condition represented by a positively associated category 1 and a negatively associated category 2 (the rightmost rectangle) are closer to an ideal scenario than a real one with respect to the fossil record, as occurrences based on fragmentary records are in general more numerous than those based on more complete specimens. The fractions below the body icons represent the number of times that a given taxon obtained a particular association with a given paleoenvironment (numerator) in relation to the total number of analyses testing this same relationship (denominator). Only associations with a ratio equal or greater than 0.5 are shown, with an asterisk indicating the latter ones.

Fig 4

Fig 4. Schematic illustration of the spatial distribution of Abelisauridae, Carcharodontosauridae, and Spinosauridae throughout coastal and terrestrial paleoenvironments.

Spinosaurids seem to have been natural inhabitants of coastal settings, while terrestrial and more inland habitats were shared by them and both abelisaurids and carcharodontosaurids. Note that the number of body icons (not to scale) does not reflect perfectly the relative abundance of these taxa within each paleoenvironment.

Fig 5

Fig 5. Reconstruction of the terrestrial paleoenvironmental setting of the Sao Khua Formation.

In the center, a generalized spinosaurid feeds on a sauropod. This trophic relationship is hypothesized based on isolated tooth crowns found in association with a sauropod skeleton [67]. In the background, a small pack of the ornithomimosaur theropod Kinnareemimus. Both sauropods and ornithomimosaurs (as part of the “herbivorous” theropods) were found to be positively associated with terrestrial paleoenvironments by Butler and Barrett [15].

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This work was supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Ph.D. scholarship, grant number 141268/2013-1 MAFS.

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