A tardigrade in Dominican amber

Marc A. Mapalo, Ninon Robin, Brendon E. Boudinot, Javier Ortega-Hernández, Phillip Barden

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Tardigrades are a diverse group of charismatic microscopic invertebrates that are best known for their ability to survive extreme conditions. Despite their long evolutionary history and global distribution in both aquatic and terrestrial environments, the tardigrade fossil record is exceedingly sparse. Molecular clocks estimate that tardigrades diverged from other panarthropod lineages before the Cambrian, but only two definitive crown-group representatives have been described to date, both from Cretaceous fossil deposits in North America. Here, we report a third fossil tardigrade from Miocene age Dominican amber. Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus gen. et sp. nov. is the first unambiguous fossil representative of the diverse superfamily Isohypsibioidea, as well as the first tardigrade fossil described from the Cenozoic. We propose that the patchy tardigrade fossil record can be explained by the preferential preservation of these microinvertebrates as amber inclusions, coupled with the scarcity of fossiliferous amber deposits before the Cretaceous.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number20211760
JournalProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume288
Issue number1960
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Immunology and Microbiology
  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • General Environmental Science
  • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

Keywords

  • Eutardigrada
  • Miocene
  • Paradoryphoribius
  • invertebrate palaeontology

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