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Are the most durable shelly taxa also the most common in the marine fossil record?

¹ Anna K. Behrensmeyer. Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Post Office Box 37012, NHB MRC 121, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012. Behrensa{at}si.edu
² Franz T. Fürsich. Institut für Paläontologie, Universität Würzburg, 97070 Würzburg, Germany. franz.fuersich{at}mail.uni-wuerzburg.de
³ Robert A. Gastaldo. Department of Geology, Colby College, Waterville, Maine 04901. ragastal{at}colby.edu
⁴ Susan M. Kidwell. Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637. skidwell{at}uchicago.edu
⁵ Matthew A. Kosnik. Centre for Coral Reef Biodiversity, School of Marine Biology and Aquaculture, James Cook University, Townsville 4811, Australia. mkosnik{at}alumni.uchicago.edu
⁶ Michal Kowalewski. Department of Geosciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061. michalk{at}vt.edu
⁷ Roy E. Plotnick. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607. plotnick{at}uic.edu
⁸ Raymond R. Rogers. Geology Department, Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota 55105. rogers{at}macalester.edu
⁹ John Alroy. National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93101. alroy{at}nceas.ucsb.edu

This paper tests whether the most common fossil brachiopod, gastropod, and bivalve genera also have intrinsically more durable shells. Commonness was quantified using occurrence frequency of the 450 most frequently occurring genera of these groups in the Paleobiology Database (PBDB). Durability was scored for each taxon on the basis of shell size, thickness, reinforcement (ribs, folds, spines), mineralogy, and microstructural organic content. Contrary to taphonomic expectation, common genera in the PBDB are as likely to be small, thin-shelled, and unreinforced as large, thick-shelled, ribbed, folded, or spiny. In fact, only six of the 30 tests we performed showed a statistically significant relationship between durability and occurrence frequency, and these six tests were equally divided in supporting or contradicting the taphonomic expectation. Thus, for the most commonly occurring genera in these three important groups, taphonomic effects are either neutral with respect to durability or compensated for by other factors (e.g., less durable taxa were more common in the original communities). These results suggest that biological information is retained in the occurrence frequency patterns of our target groups.

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