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Citation for Study 19520

About Citation title: "Quaternary intertidal and supratidal crabs (Decapoda, Brachyura) from tropical America and the systematic affinities of fossil fiddler crabs".
About Study name: "Quaternary intertidal and supratidal crabs (Decapoda, Brachyura) from tropical America and the systematic affinities of fossil fiddler crabs".
About This study is part of submission 19520 (Status: Published).

Citation

Luque J., Christy J., Hendy A.J., Rosenberg M., Portell R.W., Kerr K.A., & Palmer A.R. 2017. Quaternary intertidal and supratidal crabs (Decapoda, Brachyura) from tropical America and the systematic affinities of fossil fiddler crabs. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 00(00): 00?00.

Authors

  • Luque J. (submitter) Phone 7803992073
  • Christy J.
  • Hendy A.J.
  • Rosenberg M.
  • Portell R.W.
  • Kerr K.A.
  • Palmer A.R.

Abstract

Concentrations of fully-articulated crabs are rare in the fossil record, especially for terrestrial and semi-terrestrial taxa, which tend to be represented by scarce, fragmentary and poorly preserved fossils due to preservational biases. A newly discovered fossiliferous locality at Bahia Bique, west of Panam? City, Panam?, yielded a collection of supratidal, intertidal, and shallow subtidal invertebrates and vertebrates of mid Holocene age. Notable discoveries include the first fossils of the Sally Lightfoot crab Grapsus, the first for the land crab Cardisoma in the Eastern Pacific and, remarkably, the most complete and numerous record of fossil fiddler crabs, Uca, yet discovered. The abundance and exceptional preservation of fossil male, female, juvenile, and adult Uca aff. U. ornata in eroded burrow infills suggest that rapid entombment and early diagenesis were crucial for their preservation. The habitat preference of extant U. ornata for soft muds of open intertidal mudflats indicates that part of Bah?a Bique must have been a large estuarine mudflat with close proximity to freshwater influx during the mid-Holocene, in contrast to the present gravel field where the fossils are found as ex-situ boulders, cobbles, and gravel-sized clasts eroded from rocks of the poorly known Pacific muck. We examine the systematic relationships of fossil fiddler crabs from Bah?a Bique via synthetic and cladistic approaches, and conclude that they represent an extinct population of the extant Uca ornata. The fidelity of living?death assemblages between the Bique faunule and extant faunas of the tropical Eastern Pacific confirm the Quaternary age of the assemblage, and allow a detailed discussion of the preservation and palaeoecology of terrestrial and semi-terrestrial crabs in tropical assemblages.

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  • Canonical resource URI: http://purl.org/phylo/treebase/phylows/study/TB2:S19520
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