Crustaceans from bitumen clast in Carboniferous glacial diamictite extend fossil record of copepods

Paul A. Selden (), Rony Huys, Michael H. Stephenson, Alan P. Heward and Paul N. Taylor
Additional contact information
Paul A. Selden: University of Kansas
Rony Huys: Natural History Museum
Michael H. Stephenson: British Geological Survey, Keyworth
Alan P. Heward: Petrogas E&P, PO Box 353, PC112, Ruwi, Muscat, Oman.
Paul N. Taylor: Exploration, Petroleum Development Oman

Nature Communications, 2010, vol. 1, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Copepod crustaceans are extremely abundant but, because of their small size and fragility, they fossilize poorly. Their fossil record consists of one Cretaceous (c. 115 Ma) parasite and a few Miocene (c. 14 Ma) fossils. In this paper, we describe abundant crustacean fragments, including copepods, from a single bitumen clast in a glacial diamictite of late Carboniferous age (c. 303 Ma) from eastern Oman. Geochemistry identifies the source of the bitumen as an oilfield some 100–300 km to the southwest, which is consistent with an ice flow direction from glacial striae. The bitumen likely originated as an oil seep into a subglacial lake. This find extends the fossil record of copepods by some 188 Ma, and of free-living forms by 289 Ma. The copepods include evidence of the extant family Canthocamptidae, believed to have colonized fresh water in Pangaea during Carboniferous times.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1049 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:1:y:2010:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms1049

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1049

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().