Earliest Triassic marine tetrapod ecosystem from Spitsbergen
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Ben Creisler
Nov 13, 2025, 2:16:29 PMNov 13
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Ben Creisler
Oldest oceanic reptile ecosystem from the Age of Dinosaurs found on Arctic island
A new paper:
Aubrey J. Roberts, Maciej Rucinski, Benjamin P. Kear, Øyvind Hammer, Victoria S. Engelschiøn, Thomas Holm Scharling, Rudi B. Larsen and Jørn H. Hurum (2025)
Earliest oceanic tetrapod ecosystem reveals rapid complexification of Triassic marine communities
Science 390(6774): 722-727
DOI: 10.1126/science.adx7390
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adx7390
Editor’s summary
The end-Permian extinction was the largest of Earth’s mass extinctions, with marine environments especially affected. Although it is now understood that the recovery of marine invertebrates after this extinction was rapid, the story for vertebrates has been less clear. Roberts et al. describe a bone bed from the Svalbard archipelago showing that a large and diverse number of marine vertebrates was present just a few million years after the event. The diversity of groups present suggests that complexification after the extinction was not stepwise but was instead due to a series of rapid radiations. —Sacha Vignieri
Abstract
Tetrapods invaded oceanic environments after the cataclysmic end-Permian mass extinction (EPME), with temnospondyl amphibian to reptile-dominated assemblages succeeding across the Early Triassic [~251.9 to 247.2 million years ago (Ma)]. However, conflicting fossil occurrences, divergence estimates, and stratigraphic time averaging make the tempo of this landmark evolutionary transition uncertain. In this work, we describe an oceanic tetrapod ecosystem from a condensed mid–Early Triassic (early Spathian, ~249 Ma) bone bed on the arctic island of Spitsbergen. Apex predator ichthyosaurians, small-bodied ichthyopterygians, durophagous ichthyosauriforms, semiaquatic archosauromorphs, euryhaline temnospondyls, coelacanths, lungfish, ray-finned fish, and sharks formed an unexpectedly complex trophic network. Comparative diversity analyses further show that heterogeneous marine vertebrate communities were well established by the late-earliest Triassic (Dienerian-Smithian, ~251 Ma) and integrated fully variegate tetrapod niches by ~3 million years after the EPME.
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Aubrey J. Roberts, Maciej Rucinski, Benjamin P. Kear, Øyvind Hammer, Victoria S. Engelschiøn, Thomas Holm Scharling, Rudi B. Larsen and Jørn H. Hurum (2025)
Earliest oceanic tetrapod ecosystem reveals rapid complexification of Triassic marine communities
Science 390(6774): 722-727
DOI: 10.1126/science.adx7390
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adx7390
Editor’s summary
The end-Permian extinction was the largest of Earth’s mass extinctions, with marine environments especially affected. Although it is now understood that the recovery of marine invertebrates after this extinction was rapid, the story for vertebrates has been less clear. Roberts et al. describe a bone bed from the Svalbard archipelago showing that a large and diverse number of marine vertebrates was present just a few million years after the event. The diversity of groups present suggests that complexification after the extinction was not stepwise but was instead due to a series of rapid radiations. —Sacha Vignieri
Abstract
Tetrapods invaded oceanic environments after the cataclysmic end-Permian mass extinction (EPME), with temnospondyl amphibian to reptile-dominated assemblages succeeding across the Early Triassic [~251.9 to 247.2 million years ago (Ma)]. However, conflicting fossil occurrences, divergence estimates, and stratigraphic time averaging make the tempo of this landmark evolutionary transition uncertain. In this work, we describe an oceanic tetrapod ecosystem from a condensed mid–Early Triassic (early Spathian, ~249 Ma) bone bed on the arctic island of Spitsbergen. Apex predator ichthyosaurians, small-bodied ichthyopterygians, durophagous ichthyosauriforms, semiaquatic archosauromorphs, euryhaline temnospondyls, coelacanths, lungfish, ray-finned fish, and sharks formed an unexpectedly complex trophic network. Comparative diversity analyses further show that heterogeneous marine vertebrate communities were well established by the late-earliest Triassic (Dienerian-Smithian, ~251 Ma) and integrated fully variegate tetrapod niches by ~3 million years after the EPME.
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Oldest oceanic reptile ecosystem from the Age of Dinosaurs found on Arctic island
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