Burma Terrane Amber Fauna Shows Connections to Gondwana and Transported Gondwanan Lineages to the Northern Hemisphere (Araneae: Palpimanoidea).

Burmese amber is a significant source of fossils that documents the mid-Cretaceous biota. This deposit was formed around 99 Ma on the Burma Terrane, which broke away from Gondwana and later collided with Asia, although the timing is disputed. Palpimanoidea is a dispersal-limited group that was a dominant element of the Mesozoic spider fauna, and has an extensive fossil record, particularly from Burmese amber. Using morphological and molecular data, evolutionary relationships of living and fossil Palpimanoidea are examined. Divergence dating with fossils as terminal tips, followed by ancestral range estimations, shows timing of diversification is contemporaneous with continental break-up and that widespread ancestral ranges divide into lineages that inherit different Pangean fragments, consistent with vicariance. Our results suggest that the Burmese amber fauna has ties to Gondwana due to a historical connection in the Early Cretaceous, and that the Burma Terrane facilitated biotic exchange by transporting lineages from Gondwana into the Holarctic in the Cretaceous. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Systematic Biologists 2023. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.

Citation

Hannah M Wood, Jörg Wunderlich. Burma Terrane Amber Fauna Shows Connections to Gondwana and Transported Gondwanan Lineages to the Northern Hemisphere (Araneae: Palpimanoidea). Systematic biology. 2023 Aug 01

PMID: 37527553

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