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- Bremer, Oskar, 1985-
(författare)
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Geology, stratigraphy, and fossil vertebrates of Gotland, Sweden : a review
- 2016
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Silurian limestones of Gotland, Sweden, and their exceptionally well-preserved fossils have attracted the interest of scientists for more than 200 years. The sedimentary rocks represent approximately 10 million years of time, and were deposited in a shallow, equatorial inland sea named the Baltic Basin. The majority of the sediments are composed of reef-associated strata, but a general transition can be seen along the strike from shallow water in the northeast to deeper shelf environments in the southwest. The understanding of the stratigraphy and the geology of Gotland has greatly improved during the last decades. This research on Gotland has also led to the discovery of a series of stable isotope excursions and extinctions among several faunal groups. These events were probably linked to cycles in atmospheric and oceanic states, and three of them have been recognized globally. The Baltic Basin was also home to a variety of early vertebrates. The first fossil vertebrates from Gotland were reported in 1861, but the most extensive study of these early fishes was performed in the late 1900s. More recently it was shown that the vertebrates were also affected by one of the extinction events. This thesis is an extensive review of previous work and will form a geological basis for future studies. In this work, all previous reports of vertebrates have been gathered, reviewed, and the old samples have been placed in an updated stratigraphical framework. The scale taxonomy of Gotland vertebrates, including the Baltic acanthodians, has been evaluated and partly revised. Additionally, the depositional environments of the sampled areas have been investigated. Studying the vertebrates of Gotland is important for understanding the distribution of vertebrates through time and in different environments during the Silurian. Initial results indicate environmental preferences among vertebrates on both group and species-level, which may prove useful for testing the vertebrate biozonation developed for the Silurian.
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- Bremer, Oskar, 1985-
(författare)
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Silurian vertebrates of Gotland (Sweden) and the Baltic Basin
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During the Silurian, the Swedish island Gotland was positioned close to the equator and covered by a shallow sea called the Baltic Basin. The sedimentary rocks (predominantly carbonates) comprising most of the island today were initially formed in this warm sea, and the relatively complete succession of rocks often contains fossil fragments and scales from early vertebrates, including heterostracans, anaspids, thelodonts, osteostracans, acanthodians, and a stem-osteichthyan. Fossils of early vertebrates become increasingly more common in younger Silurian rocks, but are mostly represented by fragmentary remains and rarer occurrences of articulated jawless vertebrates (agnathans). However, the record of articulated specimens and jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes) are more numerous in rocks of the following Devonian Period. Isolated peaks of agnathan diversity during the Silurian and disarticulated remains of gnathostomes from this period hint at a cryptic evolutionary history. A micropaleontological approach with broader sampling may provide a better understanding of early vertebrate distribution patterns and hopefully give some insights into this history. The objective of this study was to build upon previous sampling on Gotland and to use established frameworks for disarticulated remains with the aim of making comparisons with similar studies performed in the East Baltic. However, difficulties locating the collections from these previous works necessitated a different focus. Undescribed museum collections and newly sampled material enabled some taxonomical revisions and greatly improved the understanding of vertebrate distribution in the youngest part of the Gotland sequence. It also indicated that this interval may represent the early stages of the diversification of gnathostomes that become increasingly dominant toward the end of the Silurian. Furthermore, the description of samples from partly coeval sections in Poland enabled some preliminary comparisons outside of Gotland, and presented a striking example of restricted environmental occurrences for a thelodont taxon. This is encouraging for future sampling and investigations on Gotland. Together with the establishment of a facies-framework comparable to that developed in the East Baltic and correlations to other areas, this may prove fruitful for an increased understanding of early vertebrate distribution and evolution during the Silurian.
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- Bremer, Oskar, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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The emergence of a complex pore-canal system in the dermal skeleton of Tremataspis (Osteostraci)
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of morphology. - : Wiley. - 0362-2525 .- 1097-4687. ; 282:8, s. 1141-1157
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Thyestiids are a group of osteostracans (sister-group to jawed vertebrates) ranging in time from the early Silurian to Middle Devonian. Tremataspis is unique among thyestiids in having a continuous mesodentine and enameloid cover on its dermal elements, and an embedded pore-canal system divided into lower and upper parts by a perforated septum. The origin of this upper mesh canal system and its potential homology to similar canal systems of other osteostracans has remained a matter of debate. To investigate this, we use synchrotron radiation microtomography data of four species of Tremataspis and three other thyestiid genera. Procephalaspis oeselensis lacks an upper mesh canal system entirely, but Aestiaspis viitaensis has partially enclosed upper canals formed between slightly modified tubercles that generally only cover separate pore fields. Further modification of tubercles in Dartmuthia gemmifera forms a more extensive, semi-enclosed upper mesh canal system that overlies an extensive perforated septum, similar to that found in Tremataspis. Lower mesh canals in P. oeselensis are radially arranged and buried tubercles indicate a continuous growth and addition of dermal hard tissues. These features are lacking to varying degrees in the other investigated thyestiids, and Tremataspis probably had a determinate growth accompanied by a single mineralization phase of its dermal hard tissues. The previously proposed homology between the semi-enclosed upper canal system in Dartmuthia to the pore-canal system in Tremataspis is supported in this study, but the suggested homologies between these canals and other parts of the thyestiid vasculature to those in non-thyestiid osteostracans remain unclear. This study shows that three-dimensional modeling of high-resolution data can provide histological and structural details that can help clarify homology issues and elucidate the evolution of dermal hard tissues in osteostracans. In extension, this can give insights into how these tissues relate to those found among jawed vertebrates.
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- Bremer, Oskar, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Vertebrate remains and conodonts in the upper Silurian Hamra and Sundre formations of Gotland, Sweden
- 2020
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Ingår i: GFF. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1103-5897 .- 2000-0863. ; 142:1, s. 52-80
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A long history of geological research on the island of Gotland, Sweden, has resulted in a detailed biostratigraphy based on conodonts for the Gotland sedimentary succession, but the relation between the Hamra and Sundre formations, the youngest strata on southern Gotland, has remained poorly resolved. These formations have also remained relatively poorly described in terms of vertebrates compared to other parts of the succession. A survey of museum collections and newly sampled material reveal that the taxonomical compositions and richness of vertebrate faunas remain similar compared to the underlying Burgsvik Sandstone and Oolite members. However, the relative abundance of the respective groups changes: Paralogania ludlowiensis and rare osteostracan remains of Tahulaspis sp. only occur in samples from the lower Hamra Formation, while Thelodus sculptilis becomes more common in samples from Sundre Formation. Conodont and isotope data give support to previous suggestions that the Hamra and Sundre formations may be largely isochronous, and it is possible that the observed differences in vertebrate faunas reflect changes in depositional setting. This interval on Gotland has been suggested to represent a hiatus in the East Baltic sections, where younger strata show an increased importance of acanthodians in the vertebrate faunas. Gotland could therefore give insights into the early stages of this diversification of gnathostomes during late Silurian times. However, this has to be done in combination with data from other areas, as well as with a review and revision of the scale-based taxonomy of Silurian acanthodians from the Baltic Basin.
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| 10. |
- Chen, Dong Lei, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Development of cyclic shedding teeth from semi-shedding teeth : the inner dental arcade of the stem osteichthyan Lophosteus
- 2017
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Ingår i: Royal Society Open Science. - : ROYAL SOC. - 2054-5703. ; 4:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The numerous cushion-shaped tooth-bearing plates attributed to the stem-group osteichthyan Lophosteus superbus, which are argued here to represent the ancient form of inner dental arcade, display a unique and presumably primitive way of tooth shedding by basal hard tissue resorption. They carry regularly spaced, recumbent, gently recurved teeth arranged in transverse tooth files that diverge towards the lingual margin of the cushion. Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction from propagation phase contrast synchrotron microtomography (PPC-SRμCT) reveals remnants of the first-generation teeth embedded in the basal plate that have never been discerned in any taxa. These teeth were shed by semi-basal resorption with the periphery of their bases retained as dentine rings. The rings are highly overlapped, which evidences tooth shedding prior to adding the next first-generation tooth. Later teeth at the same sites underwent cyclical replacing and shedding through basal resorption, producing stacks of buried resorption surfaces separated by bone of attachment. The number and spatial arrangement of resorption surfaces elucidates that basal resorption of replacement teeth had taken place at the older tooth sites before the addition of the youngest first-generation teeth at the lingual margin. Thus the replacement tooth buds cannot have been generated by a single permanent dental lamina, but must have arisen either from successional dental laminae associated with the predecessor teeth, or directly from the dental epithelium of these teeth. The virtual histological dissection of these Late Silurian microfossils broadens our understanding of the development of the gnathostome dental systems and the acquisition of the osteichthyan-type of tooth replacement.
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