A new fossil species of Clypeaster (Echinoidea) from Malaysian Borneo and an overview of the Central Indo-Pacific echino
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REGULAR RESEARCH ARTICLE
A new fossil species of Clypeaster (Echinoidea) from Malaysian Borneo and an overview of the Central Indo-Pacific echinoid fossil record Morana Mihaljevic´1,2
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Alana J. Rosenblatt3
Received: 7 March 2018 / Accepted: 31 August 2018 Ó Akademie der Naturwissenschaften Schweiz (SCNAT) 2018
Abstract A complete, but fractured and crushed, echinoid corona from early to middle Miocene of Sarawak, Malaysia, is described as a new species, Clypeaster sarawakensis nov. sp. Although similar to modern C. rarispinus, the new species shows a distinct set of characters including petal length, periproct position and gut coiling. The discovery of a new Clypeaster, a genus characterised by a high preservation potential, illustrates that little is known about echinoid evolution and diversification in the Central Indo-Pacific, which features as a biodiversity hotspot since the Oligocene. Besides describing Clypeaster sarawakensis, we also compiled the known Central Indo-Pacific echinoid fossil record and used it to examine the Cenozoic diversity of echinoids. The overall diversity throughout the Cenozoic, and especially the rapid diversity increase at the Oligocene–Miocene boundary, corresponds to diversity trends observed in other taxa from the region. Keywords Hotspot Tethys Miocene Cenozoic Preservation potential Computed tomography
Introduction The Central Indo-Pacific has been a hotspot of marine biodiversity for the last 28 My (Mihaljevic´ et al. 2017). The high diversity of corals (Wallace and Rosen 2006), as well as foraminifera (Renema et al. 2008), molluscs (Kay 1996; Harzhauser et al. 2002, 2008) and mangroves (Ellison et al. 1999; Morley 2000), has shifted from the West Tethyan marine biodiversity hotspot (middle Eocene and older), through an Arabian hotspot (late Eocene–early Miocene), and finally to the Central Indo-Pacific region where it was
Editorial Handling: Christian Klug.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13358-018-0164-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Morana Mihaljevic´ [email protected] 1
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia
2
Science Lab UZH, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland
3
School of Veterinary Science, The University of Queensland, Gatton, QLD 4343, Australia
well established by the early Miocene (Harzhauser et al. 2007; Renema et al. 2008). Shallow water, tropical coral reefs provided the foundation for its diversity by offering habitats for a myriad of vertebrate and invertebrate species, each of which has a specific function within the ecosystem. Echinoids (Echinodermata: Echinoidea), for example, are important herbivores in the reef ecosystems; however, they are also known to be linked to major ecosystem shifts. A classic example is the decline in Caribbean urchin densities due to the introduction o
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