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A Fish and Tetrapod Fauna from Romer's Gap Preserved In [Palaeontology, Vol. 62, Part 2, 2019, pp. 225–253] A FISH AND TETRAPOD FAUNA FROM ROMER’S GAP PRESERVED IN SCOTTISH TOURNAISIAN FLOODPLAIN DEPOSITS by BENJAMIN K. A. OTOO1,5,* ,JENNIFERA.CLACK1,*, TIMOTHY R. SMITHSON1, CARYS E. BENNETT2, TIMOTHY I. KEARSEY3 and MICHAEL I. COATES4 1University Museum of Zoology Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, UK; [email protected], [email protected] 2Department of Geology, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK; [email protected] 3British Geological Survey, The Lyell Centre, Research Avenue South, Edinburgh, EH14 4AP, UK; [email protected] 4Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago, Culver Hall, 1025 East 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; [email protected] 5Current address: Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago, Culver Hall, 1025 East 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; [email protected] *Corresponding authors Typescript received 15 December 2017; accepted in revised form 20 July 2018 Abstract: The end-Devonian mass extinction has been of which are currently endemic to the Ballagan Formation. framed as a turning point in vertebrate evolution, enabling There are two named tetrapods, Aytonerpeton and Diplo- the radiation of tetrapods, chondrichthyans and radus, with at least two others also represented. Gyracanths, actinopterygians. Until very recently ‘Romer’s Gap’ ren- holocephalans, and actinopterygian fishes are represented by dered the Early Carboniferous a black box standing rarer fossils. This material compares well with vertebrate between the Devonian and the later Carboniferous, but fossils from other Ballagan deposits. Faunal similarity analy- now new Tournaisian localities are filling this interval. sis using an updated dataset of Devonian–Carboniferous Recent work has recovered unexpected tetrapod and lung- (Givetian–Serpukhovian) sites corroborates a persistent fish diversity. However, the composition of Tournaisian Devonian/Carboniferous split. Separation of the data into faunas remains poorly understood. Here we report on a marine and non-marine partitions indicates more Devo- Tournaisian vertebrate fauna from a well-characterized, nar- nian–Carboniferous faunal continuity in non-marine set- row stratigraphic interval from the Ballagan Formation tings compared to marine settings. These results agree with exposed at Burnmouth, Scotland. Microfossils suggest the latest fossil discoveries and suggest that the Devonian– brackish conditions and the sedimentology indicates a low- Carboniferous transition proceeded differently in different energy debris flow on a vegetated floodplain. A range of environments and among different taxonomic groups. vertebrate bone sizes are preserved. Rhizodonts are repre- sented by the most material, which can be assigned to two Key words: Romer’s Gap, Tournaisian, tetrapod, flood- taxa. Lungfish are represented by several species, almost all plain, Carboniferous, rhizodont. R OMER’s Gap (Romer 1956; Coates & Clack 1995) is a 2015), but with the notable exception of the unique, sub- hiatus in the non-marine fossil record that currently stantial and partly articulated skeleton of Pederpes from spans the Tournaisian stage of the Carboniferous (~359– Scotland (Clack & Finney 2005). However, the challenge 345 Ma). Named for the paucity of tetrapod fossils presented by Romer’s Gap extends beyond tetrapods. Few throughout this interval, the gap has long obscured clado- Tournaisian fish localities have been known until recently genic events and ecological transitions implied by differ- (Clarkson 1985; Long 1989; Sallan & Coates 2010; Man- ences between the few, mostly aquatic, limbed forms sky & Lucas 2013; Sallan & Galimberti 2015; Mickle 2017, present at the end of the Devonian and the diverse and Richards et al. 2018), and these, too, appear impoverished disparate tetrapods known from the Visean (Wellstead relative to subsequent Visean faunas. 1982; Clarkson et al. 1994; Pardo et al. 2017). What little It follows that all three major living vertebrate divi- we know of Tournaisian tetrapods is drawn from not sions, actinopterygians (Sallan 2014; Giles et al. 2017),- much more than isolated bones and fragments from chondrichthyans (Coates et al. 2017, 2018), and tetrapods localities such as Blue Beach in Canada (Anderson et al. (Clack et al. 2016; Pardo et al. 2017) underwent major © 2018 The Authors. doi: 10.1111/pala.12395 225 Palaeontology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Palaeontological Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 226 PALAEONTOLOGY, VOLUME 62 radiations within this key interval. Moreover, it seems in Scotland (Greig 1988), and probably spans the whole likely that these radiations occurred opportunistically, to of the Tournaisian (Smithson et al. 2012). The Ballagan is refill ecological space in the aftermath of serial extinction characterized by alternating dolostones (‘cementstones’), events that occurred close to end of the Devonian (Sallan palaeosols, sandstones and siltstones. The last of these & Coates 2010; Sallan & Galimberti 2015). But the have been identified as an important facies for preserving absence of a substantial record of Tournaisian fossil verte- fossils both in the Ballagan and elsewhere in the Car- brates obscures the timing and true phylogenetic pattern boniferous (Bennett et al. 2016; Kearsey et al. 2016). The of the Devonian–Carboniferous transition. It remains Ballagan has produced isolated (macro)fossils in the past unclear whether these large-scale post-extinction diversifi- (Clack 2002) but its full fossiliferous potential has only cations arose from short (Tournaisian) or long (Devo- been realized recently via the TW:eed project (http://tetra nian) fuses. We have almost no perspective on the pods.org/), which has also increased our sedimentological multiple ecological transitions that took place at this time, and palaeoenvironmental knowledge of the formation especially the ongoing vertebrate invasions of non-marine (Smithson et al. 2012, 2015; Bennett et al. 2016, 2017; environments including the likely multiple episodes of Clack et al. 2016; Kearsey et al. 2016). terrestrialization within the Tetrapoda. Moreover, the The entire Ballagan Formation is exposed at Burn- hypothesized abruptness of the end-Devonian mass mouth, Scotland (Fig. 1), as just over 500 m of vertically extinction (Hangenberg event) (Sallan & Coates 2010) dipping beds. Most of the tetrapod fossils at Burnmouth and an inferred Lilliput effect (Sallan & Galimberti 2015) occur from 332–383 m, though there are isolated bones deserve to be tested. Already, Tournaisian tetrapod dis- known from lower horizons (see Clack et al. 2016, fig. coveries include a mix of morphologies (Anderson et al. 6a). The greatest concentration comes from a ~50 cm 2015) that are distributed across multiple nodes in recent span within a highly-sampled 1 m interval at 340.5 m phylogenetic analyses (Clack et al. 2016) and a recently- originally discovered by TRS. This 1 m interval contains recognized Tournaisian radiation in lungfish (Smithson the Ossirarus and Aytonerpeton beds (Clack et al. 2016) et al. 2015) contradicts a historical narrative of post- and is here designated the Tetrapod Interval Metre, or Devonian decline and stasis. TIM (Fig. 2). These various observations raise the possibility that the The Ballagan Formation comprises 10 facies and three Devonian–Carboniferous divide recovered by Sallan & facies associations, each of which occur throughout the Coates (2010) might not be expressed in the same way formation: (1) fluvial facies association; (2) overbank across all environments, particularly given the uneven dis- facies association; and (3) saline-hypersaline lake facies tribution of end-Devonian diversity loss among taxo- association (Bennett et al. 2016). The sandy siltstone nomic groups (Sallan & Coates 2010). Thus, there may be facies occurs within the overbank facies association, and discernable time/environment associations, with different is characterized as matrix-supported, ungraded siltstones, levels of taxonomic/ecological continuity across the Devo- with millimetre-sized siltstone and very fine sandstone nian–Carboniferous boundary. However, widespread lithic clasts. This facies is a key characteristic of the Balla- euryhalinity among Devonian–Carboniferous vertebrates gan Formation, with 71 beds reported from the Burn- (O Gogain et al. 2016; Goedert et al. 2018) may support mouth succession. Beds are randomly distributed through the hypothesis of a cosmopolitan post-extinction fauna in the succession, laterally variable, and range in thickness the Tournaisian (Friedman & Sallan 2012). from 0.2 to 140 cm (Bennett et al. 2016). 71% of beds Here we describe the vertebrate fossil fauna from the overlie palaeosols or desiccation cracks and often occur in Tournaisian-age Ballagan Formation exposed on the stacked sequences with palaeosols. The palaeosols are beach at Burnmouth, Scotland. The fossils come from a rooted red, green or grey siltstones and only rarely con- 1 m stratigraphic interval. These new data, along with tain small carbonate nodules (Kearsey et al. 2016). They those from the Blue Beach locality (Anderson et al. 2015), represent a range of floodplain environments including are added to the dataset of Sallan & Coates (2010) to test woodland (vertisols), scrubby vegetation (entisols, incepti-
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