New insights into the reading of Paleozoic plant fossil record discontinuities

Abstract

Studying the discontinuity patterns of Paleozoic vascular plants provides a global vision of these key events from the multivariate methods viewpoint. Non-metric multidimensional scaling, detrended correspondence analysis and cluster analysis have been employed together with a set of diversity and abundance measures and an evaluation of the geologic constraints from the plant fossil record data. The results reveal four clear significant discontinuities in terms of taxonomic composition and record representativeness during the early-middle Devonian, Devonian–Carboniferous, Mississippian–Pennsylvanian and early-late Permian. Due to the controversial character of the plant fossil record data and the effect of mass extinction events, the results can be explained in taxonomic turnover and ecological reorganisation terms which emphasise the crucial role of the geologic constrains in paleobiological inference.