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Published: July 22, 2012

Brazil 2012 Fieldwork Diary Entry 3: Permian Paleontology of the Parnaíba Basin

Ken Angielczyk, MacArthur Curator of Paleomammalogy and Section Head, Negaunee Integrative Research Center

In my two previous posts, I briefly talked about who synapsids are and the need to search for early therapsids in places outside of the traditional areas of study (Russia and southern Africa). This time, let's focus on the area of Brazil we'll be working in, and why we're interested in the rocks that are exposed there. We'll be doing our fieldwork in a geologic structure known as the Parnaíba Basin, which preserves rocks ranging in age from the Cambrian Period (over 488 million years ago) to the Early Cretaceous Period (about 135 million years ago). 

Parts of a fossil fish specimen exposed on broken rock surfaces. A portion of the skull is present on the upper right piece, with the tip of the snout being near the right edge of the picture. The team discovered this specimen in 2011. Photo by Ken Angielczyk.

In my two previous posts, I briefly talked about who synapsids are and the need to search for early therapsids in places outside of the traditional areas of study (Russia and southern Africa). This time, let's focus on the area of Brazil we'll be working in, and why we're interested in the rocks that are exposed there. We'll be doing our fieldwork in a geologic structure known as the Parnaíba Basin, which preserves rocks ranging in age from the Cambrian Period (over 488 million years ago) to the Early Cretaceous Period (about 135 million years ago). Today, the basin is located just south of the equator in northeastern Brazil. During the Permian Period (the time in which we're interested), it was located at mid-latitudes in the north-central part of the super-continent Gondwana.

Map of Brazil showing the location of the Parnaíba Basin. Base map by Felipe Menegaz.

The specific rocks that we will be studying are part of a rock unit called the Pedra de Fogo Formation. The name of the formation roughly means “fire stone,” and refers to the fact that certain parts of the unit are rich in chert (or flint), which can be used to generate sparks for starting fires. The rocks of the Pedra de Fogo Formation were formed during the Permian Period of Earth history (299 to 251 million years ago), but currently there is uncertainty about the exact age of the formation. This is because the rocks have only been dated using biostratigraphy, a process in which paleontologists compare the fossils preserved in a rock unit of uncertain age to rock units of known age that preserve similar fossils. Some of the fossils in the Pedra de Fogo Formation are consistent with an age in the early part of the Permian, whereas others are more suggestive of a later age in the period.

The Pedra de Fogo Formation is composed of sedimentary rocks, i.e.,rocks that are formed from sediment generated by the erosion of older rocks, which was transported and redeposited elsewhere. The structure and composition of sedimentary rocks informs us about the environments in which they were deposited. In the case of the Pedra de Fogo, it appears that the rocks were primarily deposited in coastal environments like river deltas and coastal plains, as well as on the floodplains surrounding rivers. Indeed, during the Permian, part of the Parnaíba Basin was likely occupied by a shallow inland sea that was intermittently connected to the ocean to the west, with the rocks of the Pedra de Fogo Formation representing terrestrial environments along the margins of the sea.

Several kinds of fossils have been found in the Pedra de Fogo Formation. These include clams, sharks, bony fish, an archaic amphibian that somewhat resembled a living crocodile, and lots of fossil wood. Indeed, the Tocantins Fossil Trees Natural Monument is located in the Parnaíba Basin, highlighting the petrified forest that is preserved in the Pedra de Fogo Formation. There are also filled-in burrows made by some of the invertebrate animals (likely worms and small crustaceans) that lived in the mud along the shorelines of the bodies of water present at the time.

Dr. Claudia Marsicano stands next to the fossilized trunk of a tree fern in the Parnaíba Basin. Photo by Ken Angielczyk.

Why are we interested in looking for synapsid fossils in the Pedra de Fogo Formation? There are several reasons: 1) The rocks are of the right age. They date from the Permian Period of Earth history, a time when synapsids were some of the dominant animals on land. Moreover, if the formation is from the later parts of the Early Permian, it is roughly the age when we would expect early therapsids to be present. 2) The rocks were formed in the right environment. Rocks that are formed on the floodplains of rivers and in deltaic environments often preserve fossils of terrestrial animals because sediments carried by the rivers can quickly bury animal remains, increasing the probability that they will become fossils. Furthermore, some of the richest synapsid-bearing rocks in North America formed in lowland floodplain and coastal plain environments, much like the environment represented by the Pedra de Fogo. Therefore, the specific environment the rocks sample is one where we know early synapsids liked to live. 3) The previous discovery of fossils in the Pedra de Fogo Formation demonstrates that it is a productive area for finding fossils. In particular, the presence of the amphibian demonstrates that terrestrial vertebrates are preserved in the rocks. 4) The Parnaíba Basin is located in a paleogeographically important place. It's in an area of Gondwana that generally has a very limited fossil record, so any discoveries we make will throw new light on the animals that were living there in the Permian. In addition, its location between the equatorial regions where early synapsids are found and the high latitude areas of southern Africa where therapsids are common puts it along a possible dispersal route that early therapsids could have used to reach southern Africa.

Now all we have to do is find some fossils…

Ken Angielczyk
MacArthur Curator of Paleomammalogy and Section Head

I am a paleobiologist interested in three main topics: 1) understanding the broad implications of the paleobiology and paleoecology of extinct terrestrial vertebrates, particularly in relation to large scale problems such as the evolution of herbivory and the nature of the end-Permian mass extinction; 2) using quantitative methods to document and interpret morphological evolution in fossil and extant vertebrates; and 3) tropic network-based approaches to paleoecology. To address these problems, I integrate data from a variety of biological and geological disciplines including biostratigraphy, anatomy, phylogenetic systematics and comparative methods, functional morphology, geometric morphometrics, and paleoecology.

A list of my publications can be found here.

More information on some of my research projects and other topics can be found on the fossil non-mammalian synapsid page.

Most of my research in vertebrate paleobiology focuses on anomodont therapsids, an extinct clade of non-mammalian synapsids ("mammal-like reptiles") that was one of the most diverse and successful groups of Permian and Triassic herbivores. Much of my dissertation research concentrated on reconstructing a detailed morphology-based phylogeny for Permian members of the clade, as well as using this as a framework for studying anomodont biogeography, the evolution of the group's distinctive feeding system, and anomodont-based biostratigraphic schemes. My more recent research on the group includes: species-level taxonomy of taxa such as Dicynodon, Dicynodontoides, Diictodon, Oudenodon, and Tropidostoma; development of a higher-level taxonomy for anomodonts; testing whether anomodonts show morphological changes consistent with the hypothesis that end-Permian terrestrial vertebrate extinctions were caused by a rapid decline in atmospheric oxygen levels; descriptions of new or poorly-known anomodonts from Antarctica, Tanzania, and South Africa; and examination of the implications of high growth rates in anomodonts. Fieldwork is an important part of my paleontological research, and recent field areas include the Parnaíba Basin of Brazil, the Karoo Basin of South Africa, the Ruhuhu Basin of Tanzania, and the Luangwa Basin of Zambia. My collaborators and I have made important discoveries in the course of these field projects, including the first remains of dinocephalian synapsids from Tanzania and a dinosaur relative that implies that the two main lineages of archosaurs (one including crocodiles and their relatives and the other including birds and dinosaurs) were diversifying in the early Middle Triassic, only a few million years after the end-Permian extinction. Finally, the experience I have gained while studying Permian and Triassic terrestrial vertebrates forms the foundation for work I am now involved in using models of food webs to investigate how different kinds of biotic and abiotic perturbations could have caused extinctions in ancient communities.

Geometric morphometrics is the basis of most of my quantitative research on evolutionary morphology, and I have been using this technique to address several biological and paleontological questions. For example, I conducted a simulation-based study of how tectonic deformation influences our ability to extract biologically-relevant shape information from fossil specimens, and the effectiveness of different retrodeformation techniques. I also used the method to address taxonomic questions in biostratigraphically-important anomodont taxa, and I served as a co-advisor for a Ph.D. student at the University of Bristol who used geometric morphometrics and finite element analysis to examine the functional significance of skull shape variation in fossil and extant crocodiles. Focusing on more biological questions, I am currently working on a large geometric morphometric study of plastron shape in extant emydine turtles. To date, I have compiled a data set of over 1600 specimens belonging to nine species, and I am using these data to address causes of variation at both the intra- and interspecific level. Some of the main goals of the work are to examine whether plastron morphology reflects a phylogeographic signal identified using molecular data in Emys marmorata, whether the "miniaturized" turtles Glyptemys muhlenbergiiand Clemmys guttata have ontogenies that differ from those of their larger relatives, and how habitat preference, phylogeny, and shell kinesis affect shell morphology.

A collaborative project that began during my time as a postdoctoral researcher at the California Academy of Sciences involves using using models of trophic networks to examine how disturbances can spread through communities and cause extinctions. Our model is based on ecological principles, and some of the main data that we are using are a series of Permian and Triassic communities from the Karoo Basin of South Africa. Our research has already shown that the latest Permian Karoo community was susceptible to collapse brought on by primary producer disruption, and that the earliest Triassic Karoo community was very unstable. Presently we are investigating the mechanics that underlie this instability, and we're planning to investigate how the perturbation resistance of communities as changed over time. We've also experimented with ways to use the model to estimate the magnitude and type of disruptions needed to cause observed extinction levels during the end-Permian extinction event in the Karoo. Then there's the research project I've been working on almost my whole life.

Morphology and the stratigraphic occurrences of fossil organisms provide distinct, but complementary information about evolutionary history. Therefore, it is important to consider both sources of information when reconstructing the phylogenetic relationships of organisms with a fossil record, and I am interested how these data sources can be used together in this process. In my empirical work on anomodont phylogeny, I have consistently examined the fit of my morphology-based phylogenetic hypotheses to the fossil record because simulation studies suggest that phylogenies which fit the record well are more likely to be correct. More theoretically, I developed a character-based approach to measuring the fit of phylogenies to the fossil record. I also have shown that measurements of the fit of phylogenetic hypotheses to the fossil record can provide insight into when the direct inclusion of stratigraphic data in the tree reconstruction process results in more accurate hypotheses. Most recently, I co-advised two masters students at the University of Bristol who are examined how our ability to accurately reconstruct a clade's phylogeny changes over the course of the clade's history.

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