Vertebraria solid-stele and polyarch roots colonised by fungal spores (From Slater et al., 2014)
A lagerstätte (German for ‘storage place’) is a site exhibiting an extraordinary preservation of life forms from a particular era. The term was originally coined by Adolf Seilacher in 1970. One of the most notable is Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia. The site, discovered by Charles Walcott in 1909, highlight one of the most critical events in evolution: the Cambrian Explosion (540 million to 525 million years ago). The factors that can create such fossil bonanzas are: rapid burial (obrution), stagnation (eutrophic anoxia), fecal pollution (septic anoxia), bacterial sealing (microbial death masks), brine pickling (salinization), mineral infiltration (permineralization and nodule formation by authigenic cementation), incomplete combustion (charcoalification), desiccation (mummification) and freezing. The preservation of decay-resistant lignin of wood and cuticle of plant leaves is widespread, but exceptional preservation also extends to tissues.
The Toploje Member chert of the Prince Charles Mountains preserves the permineralised remains of a terrestrial ecosystem before the biotic decline that began in the Capitanian and continued through the Lopingian until the Permo-Triassic transition (Slater et al., 2014). During the late Palaeozoic and early Mesozoic, Antarctica occupied a central position within Gondwana and played a key role in floristic interchange between the various peripheral regions of the supercontinent.
Singhisporites hystrix, a megaspore with ornamented surface.
The fossil micro-organism assemblage includes a broad range of fungal hyphae and reproductive structures. The macrofloral diversity in the silicified peats is relatively low and dominated by the constituent dispersed organs of arborescent glossopterid and cordaitalean gymnosperms. The fossil palynological assemblage includes a broad range of dispersed bisaccate, monosaccate, monosulcate and polyplicate pollen. The roots (Vertebraria), stems (Australoxylon) and leaves (Glossopteris) of the arborescent glossopterid exhibited feeding traces caused by arthropods, but the identification is difficult since plant and arthropod cuticles look similar in thin section. Tetrapods are currently unknown from Permian strata of the Prince Charles Mountains as either body fossils or ichnofossils (McLoughlin et al., 1997, Slater et al., 2014).
Times of exceptional fossil preservation are coincident with mass extinctions, oceanic anoxic events, carbon isotope anomalies, spikes of high atmospheric CO2, and transient warm-wet paleoclimates in arid lands (Retallack 2011). The current greenhouse crisis delivers several factors that can promote exceptional fossil preservation, such as eutrophic and septic anoxia, microbial sealing, and permineralization.
References:
Benton, M.J., Newell, A.J., (2013), Impacts of global warming on Permo-Triassic terrestrial ecosystems. Gondwana Research.
Rees, P.M., (2002). Land plant diversity and the end-Permian mass extinction. Geology 30, 827–830.
Retallack, G., (2011), Exceptional fossil preservation during CO2 greenhouse crises?, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 307: 59–74.
Slater, B.J., et al., (2014), A high-latitude Gondwanan lagerstätte: The Permian permineralised peat biota of the Prince Charles Mountains, Antarctica, Gondwana Research. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2014.01.004
Seilacher, A., (1970) “Begriff und Bedeutung der Fossil-Lagerstätten: Neues Jahrbuch fur Geologie und Paläontologie“. Monatshefte (in German) 1970: 34–39.
Letters from Gondwana. 