CSVP 2021 abstracts

volume for 2021 virtual online meeting of the Canadian Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology

Insights on the controls on floodplain-dominated fluvial successions: a perspective from the early-middle Miocene Santa Cruz Formation in Río Chalía (Patagonia, Argentina)

The Santa Cruz Formation (SCF) in Río Chalía (Austral Basin, Patagonia, Argentina) is a well-exposed fluvial succession with abundant and diverse fossil vertebrates accumulated during the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO). Using facies analysis, characterization of stratigraphic architecture, U–Pb geochronology, and vertebrate palaeontology, we assess the timing and interplay of controlling factors on the sedimentation, including tectonics, global sea level, climate and sediment supply. Throughout the succession, there occurred a constant aggradation of the floodplain-dominated fluvial system. Seven zircon U–Pb ages constrain the time of accumulation between c. 18 and 15.2 Ma, under a relatively constant sedimentation rate of 150 ± 50 m/Myr. The large number of fossil vertebrates indicates a Santacrucian fauna, showing no recognizable changes through the section. The basin scale, low gradient anastomosed fluvial system of the SCF records a period of about 3 Myr of relatively constant environmental conditions controlled by continuous basin subsidence and high sediment supply conditioned by explosive volcanism together with weathering of uplifting terrains in the Andes. In addition, the system was influenced by a temperate to warm and subhumid climate favoured by the MCO before the onset of the Andean rain shadow, together to high global sea levels.Supplementary material:https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5324976

Stratigraphy, age, and vertebrate palaeontology of the latest Cretaceous Quintanilla la Ojada locality (Basque-Cantabrian Region, northern Spain): a synthesis

The Quintanilla la Ojada section (Basque-Cantabrian Region, northern Spain) has yielded two assemblages of Late Cretaceous vertebrates, deposited during the Maastrichtian in coastal environments and related to a transgressive lag at the base of the Valdenoceda Formation. Numerous teeth of Elasmobranchii and Actinopterygii are the most prevailing fossil material, although scarce teeth of marine reptiles (Mosasauridae) and dinosaurs (Hadrosauridae) also occur. The presence of one hadrosaurian tooth, a terrestrial taxon, constitutes the first report of ornithischians in the Valdenoceda Formation. The fossil vertebrate association of Quintanilla la Ojada is similar to that discovered in Albaina (Treviño County, Burgos), also located in the Basque-Cantabrian Region, although relatively younger in age. Both fossil sites are characterised by a mixture of taxa from the northern and southern margins of the Mediterranean Tethys (north-European and north-African outcrops).

Becoming a Vertebrate Palaeontologist

The roads to becoming a palaeontologist or contributing to the discipline are many and varied and for women, often tortuous. Concentrating on early to mid 20th century women in Europe brings to light some of the ways in which women survived in the field of vertebrate palaeontology (VP) studying from the earliest fish to our own human relatives. Only are few are known: e.g., in Britain (Pearson, Steen, Rayner), France (Friant, Dechaseaux), Germany (Edinger, von Huene), Hungary (Mottl), The Netherlands (Schreuder, Sanders,), Romania (von Nopsca), and Sweden (Carlsson, Christie-Lind). It is not always easy to unravel the whys and hows of their scientific contributions or even the basic details of their lives but new historical research has brought to light over 1200 women in VP. Their paths to contributing to VP and the difficulties overcome add to the history of women in science and may inspire others to choose a life in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

Far-flung female (and fossil bone hunting) Fellows: an autoethnographical approach

Geologists roam worldwide; no less for women who took up fellowship of the ‘Geol. Soc.’. Since 1919, women Fellows of the Geological Society have lived and worked across the globe conducting fieldwork and research. Based on the author's interests and in part considering her 50 years an FGS, a selection of women Fellows is considered, many of whom affected her geological life, such as Phoebe Walder and Peigi Wallace. This autoethnographical approach encompasses women from the colonies who joined as soon as they were able; the legendary Dorothy Hill of Queensland was one of the first, with other notable Australians being Nell Ludbrook and June Phillips Ross. Others worked across the former Gondwana, such as Pamela Robinson, who pioneered much research in vertebrate palaeontology on the Indian subcontinent. Important British geologists and vertebrate palaeontologists include Dorothea Bate, Sonia Cole, Elinor Gardner and Eileen Hendriks, who wrote key geological texts in the earlier twentieth century. More contemporary women did work for UNESCO, the International Union of Geological Sciences and in the oil industry. During the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, female Fellows have worked across the world in greater numbers in all aspects of geoscience, from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

Canadian Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology Abstracts 2019

7th Annual meeting, May 10-13, 2019, Grande Prairie, AB. Abstract volume.

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825–95)

Huxley, an English zoologist with strong philosophical interests, originally influenced by K.E. von Baer’s embryological typology, became an authority first in invertebrate zoology and then in vertebrate palaeontology. After the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, he proclaimed his acceptance of the theory of evolution, but disagreed on important points and applied common descent – but not natural selection – in his scientific works only after reading Ernst Haeckel’s Generelle Morphologie (1866). He published extensively in anthropology, ethnology, philosophy, religion, politics and ethics, and was a great popularizer of science.

Efficient Digitisation of Unaccessioned Specimens in a Large Vertebrate Fossil Collection to Enhance Data Quality and Mitigate Risk

The Museums Victoria (NMV) Vertebrate Palaeontology Collection holds more than 130,000 specimens, including the single largest collection of vertebrate fossils from the state of Victoria, Australia. Accessioned specimens make up around one third of the collection; however, few of the other, unaccessioned specimens have been catalogued. Vertebrate fossil accession at NMV is carried out in three stages: registration under a permanent specimen number, entry into the database software catalogue Axiell EMu, and barcode-based location tracking using a handheld device linked to an online application (http://mvwise.museum.vic.gov.au). In the past, unregistered specimens have been catalogued or location- tracked only infrequently, and the scale of legacy subcollections makes full registration an impractical goal for unaccessioned specimens. Accurate knowledge of unaccessioned specimens is essential to estimate collection size and composition, and predict future resource needs. Where such knowledge is held by staff but not documented, there is a persistent risk of dissociation or loss. Further, having accessible digital records greatly enhances data discoverability for research and exhibition users. We describe an EMu-based workflow for unaccessioned specimens in the NMV Vertebrate Palaeontology Collection, which newly documents and tracks specimens without the time burden of prior accession protocols. Minimum-data EMu catalogue records are generated from a handheld MVWISE scanner (based on Apple mobile hardware), with photographs that include the specimen along with any existing metadata or context. These records are immediately linked to trackable barcodes associated with storage locations. Subsequently, relevant taxonomic, stratigraphic or historical information can be cross-referenced to catalogue records en masse, either directly or using import functions. This metadata is accessed efficiently from within Axiell EMu via the specimen photographs, rather than requiring a subsequent physical search. The risks mitigable by this project are discussed, as are reasons commonly cited for not accessioning specimens, and dilemmas and consequences arising from the new approach. We also provide guidance on the rates of data generation, the required and recommended resources to be used, and forecast practical benefits in discovery and use for the collection.

The challenges and potential utility of phenotypic specimen-level phylogeny based on maximum parsimony

ABSTRACTSpecimen-level phylogenetic approaches are widely used in molecular biology for taxonomic and systematic purposes. However, they have been largely ignored in analyses based on morphological traits, where phylogeneticists mostly resort to species-level analyses. Recently, a number of specimen-level studies have been published in vertebrate palaeontology. These studies indicate that specimen-level phylogeny may be a very useful tool for systematic reassessments at low taxonomic levels. Herein, we review the challenges when working with individual organisms as operational taxonomic units in a palaeontological context, and propose guidelines of how best to perform a specimen-level phylogenetic analysis using the maximum parsimony criterion. Given that no single methodology appears to be perfectly suited to resolve relationships among individuals, and that different taxa probably require different approaches to assess their systematics, we advocate the use of a number of methodologies. In particular, we recommend the inclusion of as many specimens and characters as feasible, and the analysis of relationships using an extended implied weighting approach with different downweighting functions. Resulting polytomies should be explored using a posteriori pruning of unstable specimens, and conflicting tree topologies between different iterations of the analysis should be evaluated by a combination of support values such as jackknifing and symmetric resampling. Species delimitation should be consistent among the ingroup and based on a reproducible approach. Although time-consuming and methodologically challenging, specimen-level phylogenetic analysis is a highly useful tool to assess intraspecific variability and provide the basis for a more informed and accurate creation of species-level operational taxonomic units in large-scale systematic studies. It also has the potential to inform us about past speciation processes, morphological trait evolution, and their potential intrinsic and extrinsic drivers in pre-eminent detail.