Abstract
Brachiopods are (perhaps all too) familiar to any geology student who has taken an invertebrate paleontology course; they may well be less familiar to biology students. Even though brachiopods are among the most significant components of the marine fossil record by virtue of their considerable diversity, abundance, and long evolutionary history, fewer than 500 species are extant. Reconciling the geological and biological perspectives is necessary in order to test hypotheses, not only about phylogenetic relationships among brachiopods but also about their spectacular decline in diversity in the end-Permian mass extinction, which permanently reset their evolutionary trajectory. Studying brachiopod ontogeny and development, population genetics, ecology, physiology, and biogeography, as well as molecular systematics and phylogenomics, enables us to better understand the context of evolutionary processes over the short term. Investigating brachiopod morphological, taxonomic, and stratigraphic records over the Phanerozoic Eon reveals historical patterns of long-term macroevolutionary change, patterns that are simply unknowable from a biological perspective alone.
Highlights
Brachiopods, known as lamp shells or the “other” bivalves, have played a central role in both geologists’ and biologists’ understanding of the history and evolution of life on Earth
Investigating brachiopod morphological, taxonomic, and stratigraphic records over the Phanerozoic Eon reveals historical patterns of long-term macroevolutionary change, patterns that are unknowable from a biological perspective alone
In the process of untangling the evolutionary history of brachiopods, it is clear that geologists and biologists have approached the topic of brachiopod evolution differently
Summary
Brachiopods (from the Greek, meaning “arm-foot”), known as lamp shells or the “other” bivalves, have played a central role in both geologists’ and biologists’ understanding of the history and evolution of life on Earth They assert their importance quietly, by their near-ubiquitous presence in the rock and fossil record and their remarkable diversity throughout the Phanerozoic Eon, up to and including the Holocene. A comprehensive understanding of brachiopod evolutionary pattern and process will look somewhat different as the evidence and analysis of evolution differ, and I think this difference has generated, and unnecessarily perpetuated, a kind of dynamic tension between paleontologists and neontologists This situation has, happily, improved markedly over the past decade. By doing so can we reach a more complete understanding of the evolution of brachiopods, a clade of marine organisms with significant, if diminished, extant diversity, and a long, rich, and tremendously informative fossil record
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