Acta Geologica Polonica, Vol. 71 (2021), No. 3, pp. 249–258 DOI: 10.24425/agp.2020.134565 In defence of invertebrate fossil taxonomy JERZY FEDOROWSKI Institute of Geology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Bogumiła Krygowskiego 12, 61-680 Poznań, Poland. E-mail: [email protected]. ABSTRACT: Fedorowski, J. 2021. In defence of invertebrate fossil taxonomy. Acta Geologica Polonica, 71 (3), 249–258. Warszawa. Starting from a subjective viewpoint on the decreasing interest in invertebrate fossil taxonomy, this essay discusses its importance in palaeobiological studies exemplified with cases from the palaeobiogeography and palaeoecology of rugose corals, and aims at provoking a discussion on the topic. The possible causes of this negative declining trend include inherent problems of palaeontological taxonomy, and changing systems in science and higher education. Key words: Taxonomy; Invertebrates; Palaeobiology; Palaeobiogeography; Palaeoecology. INTRODUCTION glected field of study. Beyond any doubt, however, invertebrate taxonomic palaeontology, intimately Comparison of the Earth to a book is trivial but confined to evolutionary endeavours, is crucial in nothing better comes to my mind in order to illustrate various aspects of palaeobiological considerations. the enormous amount of information hidden in the Without its further development, such studies will rocks. The Earth’s book, as any other book can be soon collapse to a blind and illiterate level. read with understanding only by a person knowing This essay demonstrates the potential of well- the language it is written in. In the case of the palae- grounded taxonomic knowledge and the need for obiological chapter of the Earth’s book, the taxonomy careful taxonomic work in palaeobiological studies, of fossils forms a kind of linguistic fundamental. exemplified here with palaeobiogeographic and pa- The better we know the language, the more mys- laeoecological analyses. The examples given here are teries hidden in the rock pages of the Earth’s book based on the rugose corals, the group of fossils which become readable and understood. Why did we re- have been the main focus of my studies for decades. cently reduce the language to a few basic words Nonetheless, similar examples can be found in almost instead of trying to develop it? A professional any selected invertebrate clade. taxonomist, i.e., a person eligible to follow the re- With this text I hope to provoke a discussion that quirements of a complete taxonomic study should may help to stop the declining trend in taxonomic have undertaken broad courses in geology and pa- studies, which is dangerous for the field of inverte- laeontology supervised by an experienced teacher brate palaeobiology as a whole. and should be given time adequate to become ac- quainted with all details important for the group of animals or plants he/she wants to investigate. Is this TAXONOMY AND PALAEBIOGEOGRAPHY possible in our days? Fossil taxonomy flourished during the 18th and The intimate inter-relationship between the tax- 19th centuries and has been respected during most of onomy of extant plants and animals and their geo- the past century, but then, has gradually become a ne- graphical distribution has been obvious since A. v. 250 JERZY FEDOROWSKI Humboldt travelled to the Americas (e.g., Humboldt and Bonpland 1805–1829). However, the reasons gov- erning why fossil taxa found in currently distant areas had potentially close relationships, while certain taxa present in adjacent regions were quite evolutionarily distinct, remained mysterious for over a century. The Carboniferous and Permian Rugosa illustrate well the mutual effect of precise taxonomy on correctly reconstructed palaeogeography, and vice versa. For instance, let’s consider the two papers of Minato and Kato (1965a, b) as an example. The recognition by those authors of the clinotabulae (i.e., a very special- ised skeletal detail) in the Waagenophyllidae Wang, 1950, and the absence of such skeletal structures in the Durhaminidae Minato and Kato, 1965b, consti- tutes one of the fundamental differences between these families of Permian colonial Rugosa. However, the reconstructions by those authors of the palaeo- geographic distribution of the coral families men- tioned created questions rather than offered solutions. It is worth reminding the reader that the theory of Text-fig. 1. Reconstructions of the palaeogeography of the world. plate tectonics has been widely accepted only since A – early Carboniferous, B – late Carboniferous (after Scotese 2001). the mid-1960’s. In this pre-plate tectonics era, Minato and Kato (1965a, figs 112–125; 1965b, fig. 1) did not have the chance of implementing that then-nascent notion of continental wandering into their reconstruc- tions of the distribution of the Waagenophyllidae and rugosan realms (Fedorowski 1986; Fedorowski et al. Durhaminidae. 2007). The stratigraphic ranges of particular rugosan Only the theory of plate tectonic enables a reli- clades developing in those two realms led to a conclu- able explanation of these major palaeobiogeographic sion that their late Permian extinction was diachro- questions. The distribution of the Waagenophyllidae nous (Fedorowski 1997). The rugose coral dwellers and Durhaminidae during the Cisuralian, mysterious of the Tethys Realm continued to the latest, although when maps by Minato and Kato (1965a, b) are con- not to the end, of the Changhsingian, whereas those sidered, becomes quite comprehensible after Pangea developing in the Cordillera-Arctic-Uralian Realm is reconstructed, based on global tectonics (Text- disappeared from the stratigraphic record either fig. 1A, B). Representatives of the Waagenophyllidae near the end of the Wuchiapingian or in the early dwelled in the areas restricted to the Palaeotethys: the Changhsingian. eastern shelves of Pangea to the west (e.g., the recent The stratigraphic ranges of taxa, superimposed Carnic Alps and Sicily), and the Chinese and the on the sequence of palaeogeographic changes, is yet Indochinese microcontinents to the east. By contrast, another character that must be considered in phylo- the Durhaminidae appear to have been restricted to genetic reconstructions. The main Carboniferous and the north-western and western shelves of Pangea, oc- Permian Rugosa clades offer a handsome example. cupying the long belt from the recent Urals through The family Kepingophyllidae Wu and Zhou, 1982 Svalbard and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the appeared either shortly after the closing of a passage Cordillera and the Andes to Peru (Fedorowski et al. between the Uralian and the Palaeotethys seas, or 2007). Thus, precise rugosan taxonomy, when com- after that connection became impassable for corals. bined with the proper reconstruction of Cisuralian Thus, that family is unknown from the Cordillera- palaeogeography, easily explains why the rugose cor- Arctic-Uralian Realm, but gave rise to the Permian als from the Urals have nothing in common with con- family Waagenophyllidae in the Palaeotethys. In con- temporaneous corals from the Carnic Alps and China, trast, the families Durhaminidae and Kleopatrinidae in spite of being located at present between those two Fedorowski, Bamber, and Stevens, 2007 are re- areas. Those recognitions, in turn, lead to the dis- stricted to the Cordillera-Arctic-Uralian Realm. The tinction of two main late Carboniferous and Permian simplest representatives of the Kepingophyllidae, IN DEFENCE OF INVERTEBRATE FOSSIL TAXONOMY 251 Durhaminidae, and Kleopatrinidae bear some char- Variscan orogens (Ziegler 1988) created depositional acters pointing to the Family Lithostrotionidae d’Or- environments impassable for larvae of some rugose bigny, 1852 as ancestral. The Lithostrotionidae were coral species until the late Viséan. globally distributed during the Mississippian and Not only a disregard of the plate tectonic data early Pennsylvanian (Text-fig. 1A), prior to the for- for the palaeobiogeography, but also a disregard of mation of Pangea. These examples clearly suggest palaeontological data in tectonic reconstructions may that phylogenetic reconstructions in general, and taxa cause crucial consequences. The book by Torsvik identifications in detail, must take into account the and Cocks (2017) is certainly a very comprehensive palaeobiogeographic distribution in time, if a mono- contribution combining an enormous amount of data phyletic taxonomic approach is followed. derived from the physical part of a widely understood However, the creation of distinctive palaeobiogeo- geology, but the palaeobiological data incorporated graphic realms is not restricted to the activity of large- in the book are very limited. A small detail, the phys- scale geographical barriers, like Pangea. Indeed, ob- ical geology data contrasting with palaeobiological stacles on smaller scales can create effective barriers data, concerns the time of closing of the inlet be- and result in significant endemism. For instance, the tween the Gondwana and the Laurussia landmasses huge eastern Laurussian peninsula that appeared fol- through northern Iberia, i.e., the recent Cantabrian lowing the Caledonian orogeny illustrates the bear- Mountains. Both maps (Torsvik and Cocks 2017, figs ing of small-scale geographic configuration on ende- 9.1c and 9.7) show the closing of that inlet in the mism. Precise taxonomy of the ancient dwellers of the middle Moscovian, whereas many papers devoted to sea behind that peninsula allowed Oliver (1976, fig. Pennsylvanian fossils document marine