Combination Features,Paleobiogeographic Affinity and Mass Extinction of the Latest Ordovician(Hirnantian) Rugosan Fauna from Northern Guizhou,China

The rugosan fauna from the Guanyinqiao Bed （latest Ordovician, Hirnantian） of northern Guizhou, China is known to belong to the cold or cool-water type corals. The components of the fauna are solitary corals only, and corallite septa are generally strongly dilated, especially the streptelasmatid corals are dominant comprising 98% of the whole fauna. The Guanyinqiao Bed is rich in rugosans of 18 genera, which are streptelasnmtid Streptelasma （=Helicelasma）, Brachyelasma, Amplexobrachyelasma, Salvadorea, Grewingkia, Borelasma, CrassUasma, Leolasma, KenophyUum, UUernelasma, Paramplexoides, Siphonolasma, Pycnactoides, Dalmanophyllum, Bodophyllum, Axiphoria, Lambeophyllum and cystiphyllid Sinkiangolasma. Although this fauna was fairly abundant in a confined area （northern-northeastern Guizhou, southern Sichuan） during the Hirnantian age, the rugosan mass extinction （generic extinction rate 81%） happened at the end of the Hirnantian Stage. It is conduded that the mass extinction is related to the ending of maximum glaciation and ice cap melting in Gondwana in the southern hemisphere in the latest Hirnantian, resulting in rapid global sea-level rise in the earliest Silurian. In the Upper Yangtze Basin, the sea bottom environments were replaced by anoxic and warmer water during that time, so that the cool-water type rugosan became extinct. The present paper attempts to revise some already described rugose coral genera and species （He, 1978, 1985） and to supplement a few new forms from the Guanyinqiao Bed. Fourteen species of 12 genera are re-described and illustrated, of which one species- Grewingkia latifossulata is new. As a whole, the rugosan fauna of the Guanyinqiao Bed may be correlated with those contemporaneous of North Europe, Estonia and North America, indicating a dose biogeographic affinity to North Europe.

Paleobiogeographic Knowledge Graph:An Ongoing Work with Fundamental Support for Future Research

Paleobiogeography investigates geographical distributions of fossil organisms and controlling factors that affect their distributions in geological history,to reveal the macro-evolution and coordinated development of life and the environment.It is a crucial window for understanding the biosphere and the geographical environment.After two centuries of development,paleobiogeographic studies have led to the accumulation of significant amounts of knowledge and data;however,the voluminous outputs present the characteristics of an“isolated island”with a scattered,limited number of authoritative definitions of terminologies and semantic heterogeneity among them.This makes data queries cumbersome,the rate of data reuse low,and data sharing more difficult.A knowledge graph(KG)has the advantage of expressing concepts and their semantic relations,which is an important tool for achieving data organization and fusion,and data mining;further,it is also a key technology for realizing the unrestricted sharing of paleobiogeographic information.Through our efforts over the past two years,a paleobiogeographic KG was developed based on the established construction procedure of the KG,which contains 273 concepts,172 properties,and 47 rules.Meanwhile,the completion of this KG and the construction of a paleobiogeographic platform for display and analysis are now being carried out.

Global paleobiogeography of Albian—Cenomanian(mid-Cretaceous)marine ostracods

Despite their potential for providing important information for paleobiogeography,studies using ostracod assemblages compiled from global datasets have been scarce so far.In this study,the paleogeographic implications of the relationship between different ostracod assemblages are analyzed and discussed for the Albian and Cenomanian.We compiled an ostracod dataset at the genus level,with 168 genera for the Albian and 174 for the Cenomanian,to which different multivariate statistical methods of grouping were applied.The affinity between different ostracod assemblages from different regions allowed for the delineation of 30 operational geographic units(OGUs)for the Albian,and 32 OGUs for the Cenomanian,grouped in three paleobiogeographic units(PBUs;Megatethys,Persia,and Austral)and one sub-unit(PBSU;Maghreb associated to the Megatethys).The Maghreb PBSU showed minor changes between the Albian and Cenomanian.The relationship among the OGUs grouped in each PBU is related to different factors,such as eustatic sea level events,similar climatic zones,and marine current circulation patterns.A relationship was observed between the Gabon and Nigeria OGUs with the Persia PBU,which suggests a direct east—west connection between them during the Cenomanian.The affinity observed in the Austral PBU between the South American,South African,and Australian regions during the Albian can be explained by their relative geographic isolation due to the Walvis Ridge barrier.The eventual flooding of this barrier led to the relationship observed between the SE Brazilian and Bolivian regions with the Austral PBU.Finally,the data also suggested that the separation of the Indian subcontinent from the Austral PBU took place during the Cenomanian.