Abstract
The Pterasteridae comprises a diversified group of extant largely deep-sea starfishes. Generic diagnoses have been based classically on soft tissue characters and skeletal architecture. A preliminary phylogeny of sixteen extant species is here worked out by cladistic analysis. The resulting tree suggests monophyly of extant genera and the validity of dissociated plates for identification of genera. Fossil remains of Pterasteridae are here described for the first time. By comparison with extant species, all the skeletal remains from the lower Upper Campanian of Belgium and from the lower Maastrichtian of Germany are tentatively assigned to the genusPteraster. The fossil record of starfishes is poor, but the present Late Cretaceous pterasterids provide one more piece of evidence of the high diversity of starfishes during the Mesozoic. Known Late Cretaceous and Paleogene fossils are broadly similar, which suggests the end-Cretaceous extinction event did not cause major turnover in asteroid faunal composition. As suggested for other starfish groups, both the fossil record of deep-sea Pterasteridae in shelf settings and tree topology imply an onshore-offshore evolutionary trend.
Kurzfassung
Bei den Pterasteridae handelt es sich um eine diversifizierte, heute überwiegend die Tiefsee bewohnende Gruppe von Seesternen. Die Gattungen werden klassischer Weise aufgrund von Merkmalen des Weichkörpers und der Skelettarchitektur unterschieden. Hier präsentieren wir eine vorläufige Phylogenie von 16 rezenten Arten. Die Ergebnisse der kladistischen Analyse lassen auf die Monophylie der rezenten Gattungen schließen. Außerdem wird der Wert isolierter Skelettplatten für die Identifizierung von Gattungen bestätigt. Zum ersten Mal werden hier fossile Überreste von Pterasteriden beschrieben. Durch Vergleiche mit rezenten Arten können alle Skelettreste aus dem unteren Obercampan von Belgien und aus dem Untermaastricht von Deutschland vorläufig der GattungPteraster zugeordnet werden. Die Fossilüberlieferung von Seesternen ist schlecht, jedoch belegen die kreidezeitlichen Pterasteriden einmal mehr die hohe Diversität der Seesterne während des Mesozoikums. Seesterne aus der Oberkreide und dem Paläogen sind einander sehr ähnlich, woraus sich schließen lässt, dass das K/T Aussterbeereignis keinen deutlichen „turnover“ in der Seesternfaunenkomposition bewirkt hat. Wie auch schon für andere Seestern-Gruppen vermutet, implizieren sowohl der Fossilbericht von Tiefsee-Pterasteriden in Schelf Sedimenten als auch die phylogenetische Beziehungen einen evolutiven onshore-offshore Trend.
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Villier, L., Blake, D.B., Jagt, J.W.M. et al. A preliminary phylogeny of the Pterasteridae (Echinodermata, Asteroidea) and the first fossil record: Late Cretaceous of Germany and Belgium. Paläont. Z. 78, 281–299 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03009226
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03009226