Abstract

The chambered shells of cephalopod mollusks, such as modern Nautilus and fossil ammonoids, have the potential to float after death, which could result in significant postmortem transport of shells away from living habitats. Such transport would call into question these clades’ documented biogeographic distributions and therefore the many (paleo)biological interpretations based on them. It is therefore imperative to better constrain the likelihood and extent of postmortem transport in modern and fossil cephalopods. Here, I combine the results of classic experiments on postmortem buoyancy with datasets on cephalopod shell form to determine that only those shells with relatively high inflation are likely to float for a significant interval after death and therefore potentially experience postmortem transport. Most ammonoid cephalopods have shell forms making postmortem transport unlikely. Data on shell forms and geographic ranges of early Late Cretaceous cephalopod genera demonstrate that even genera with shell forms conducive to postmortem buoyancy do not, in fact, show artificially inflated biogeographic ranges relative to genera with non-buoyant morphologies. Finally, georeferenced locality data for living nautilid specimens and dead drift shells indicate that most species have relatively small geographic ranges and experience limited drift. Nautilus pompilius is the exception, with a broad Indo-Pacific range and drift shells found far from known living populations. Given the similarity of N. pompilius to other nautilids in its morphology and ecology, it seems unlikely that this species would have a significantly different postmortem fate than its close relatives. Rather, it is suggested that drift shells along the east African coast may indicate the existence of modern (or recently extirpated) living populations of nautilus in the western Indian Ocean, which has implications for the conservation of these cephalopods.

Highlights

  • The problem of postmortem transportBiogeographic distributions strongly influence the ecology, evolution, and extinction of clades

  • Cephalopod mollusks with chambered shells present a special challenge—once their soft parts are removed, cephalopod shells can float after death and be picked up and transported by surface currents (Fig. 1)

  • The results presented here support the claim that the majority of ammonoid taxa

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Summary

Introduction

The problem of postmortem transportBiogeographic distributions strongly influence the ecology, evolution, and extinction of clades. Cephalopod mollusks with chambered shells present a special challenge—once their soft parts are removed, cephalopod shells can float after death and be picked up and transported by surface currents (Fig. 1) This postmortem transport or "drift" has been observed in living nautilid species, but how commonly it occurs in ancient cephalopod groups has been debated in the scientific literature for over 100 years (Walther, 1897; Reyment 1958, 1970, 1973, 2008; Stenzel 1964; House 1973, 1987; Chamberlain & Weaver 1978; Wani et al 2005; Mapes et al 2010a; Wani and Gupta, 2015; Yacobucci, 2015). If postmortem transport was frequent and extensive, the geographic distributions of fossil cephalopods should be considered unreliable proxies for living ranges

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