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Hybrid crinoids in the fossil record (Early Mississippian, Phylum Echinodermata)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

William I. Ausich  and
David L. Meyer
William I. Ausich
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210
David L. Meyer
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221
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Abstract

Potential hybrid fossil crinoids, Eretmocrinus magnificus x Eretmocrinus praegravis, are identified from the Lower Mississippian Fort Payne Formation of south-central Kentucky. These are the first fossil hybrid crinoids identified, and one of very few examples of hybrids recognized in the fossil record. Eretmocrinus magnificus x E. praegravis specimens have shapes and calyx plate sculpturing that are morphologically intermediate between well-defined, distinct parent species. Suspected hybrids occur at localities where parent species co-occur and where the parent species are the most abundant; the hybrids occur at what may have been the distributional margins of the parent species; and the mixture of characters on suspected hybrids seems to be morphogenetically partitioned. Parent species are derived from separate lineages within Eretmocrinus, and hybridization is the most probable explanation for these morphologically intermediate specimens. This example highlights the need to consider hybridization as a potential interpretation of intermediate morphologies among fossils and raises questions concerning the impact of hybridization for our interpretation of the fossil record and the role of hybridization in the evolutionary process.

Type
Research Article
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Summer 1994 , pp. 362 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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References

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