2004/12/22 by Victoria E. McCoy, Jasmina Wiemann, James C. Lamsdell +9 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Arthropod #Biochemistry #Biology #Carboniferous #Computer science #Ecology #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Evolutionary biology #Fossilization #Ichthyology and Marine Biology #Invertebrate #Isotope Analysis in Ecology #Lagerstätte #Paleontology #Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology #Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils #Pennsylvanian #Taphonomy #Tetrapod (structure) #Vertebrate
paper · doi:10.1111/gbi.12397
openalex publication_date 2004/12/22 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The chemical composition of fossil soft tissues is a potentially powerful and yet underutilized tool for elucidating the affinity of problematic fossil organisms. In some cases, it has proven difficult to assign a problematic fossil even to the invertebrates or vertebrates (more generally chordates) based on often incompletely preserved morphology alone, and chemical composition may help to resolve such questions. Here, we use in situ Raman microspectroscopy to investigate the chemistry of a diverse array of invertebrate and vertebrate fossils from the Pennsylvanian Mazon Creek Lagerstätte of Illinois, and we generate a ChemoSpace through principal component analysis (PCA) of the in situ Raman spectra. Invertebrate soft tissues characterized by chitin (polysaccharide) fossilization products and vertebrate soft tissues characterized by protein fossilization products plot in completely separate, non-overlapping regions of the ChemoSpace, demonstrating the utility of certain soft tissue molecular signatures as biomarkers for the original soft tissue composition of fossil organisms. The controversial problematicum Tullimonstrum, known as the Tully Monster, groups with the vertebrates, providing strong evidence of a vertebrate rather than invertebrate affinity.