Biotic response to Early Cretaceous climate warming in Hebei, northern China: Implications for the phased development of the Jehol Biota

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2022.111097Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The Lower Cretaceous of northern Hebei record early-middle stages of Jehol Biota.

  • Climate change from cool to warm during early development of Jehol Biota.

  • Warming climate enabled the diversification of the Jehol Biota.

Abstract

The Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota in northern China is a terrestrial lagerstätte that contains exceptionally-preserved fossils, including birds, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, mammals, insects, and flowering plants. The biota underwent three developmental phases, with relatively limited biodiversity in an early phase that rapidly diversified in a middle phase; however, the relationship between this biological radiation and climate remains uncertain. In this paper, we study fossils from the early-to-middle phases of the Jehol Biota preserved in the Lower Cretaceous (middle Valanginian-lower Barremian) Dabeigou and Dadianzi formations of Hebei Province to ascertain climatic impact on biotic evolution. The occurrence of a cool to warm climate turnover during the deposition of these strata is inferred based on a synthesis of geochemical and paleontological evidence. Palaeogeographic distribution of the middle phase of the biota is wider and positioned more southerly than that of the early phase, possibly indicating that the biota in the early and middle phases lived in boreal and temperate climate realms, respectively. Biotic diversity shows an increasing trend from the early phase to the middle phase of the Jehol Biota, closely coinciding with the cool to warm turnover of the climate. The body sizes of some taxa in the middle phase were significantly smaller than those in the early phase, which is also interpreted as a climatic effect. This study represents the first attempt to correlate the response of terrestrial evolution of the Jehol Biota to climate change, with a focus on Early Cretaceous paleotemperatures.

Introduction

The Jehol Biota existed in the middle Early Cretaceous; its known fossil localities are distributed mainly in western Liaoning, northern Hebei, and southeastern Inner Mongolia, China, and they yield a large number of well-preserved fossils of various terrestrial organisms (Chang et al., 2003; Zhou et al., 2003; Zhou, 2014; Ji et al., 2004; Huang et al., 2012; Xu et al., 2020). These assemblages represent the best-preserved terrestrial fossil assemblage from the Cretaceous, indicating the origin and early evolution of Mesozoic life (Xu et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2021). Research on this biota bears great significance for our understanding of the origin and early evolution of some major groups, e.g., eutherian and metatherian mammals, birds, many subgroups of insects, and angiosperms (Chang et al., 2003; Zhou and Wang, 2017). The Jehol Biota is generally divided into three phases: the early phase is restricted to northern Hebei (the Dabeigou and Huajiying Formations), and its main features include a small number of component species and a lack of widely known typical elements (Jin et al., 2008; Yang et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2021); the middle phase (the Yixian Formation) is the peak in terms of taxonomical diversity; and the late phase (the Jiufotang Formation) is characterized by the maximum geographical distribution of the biota (Chen, 1988; Zhou, 2006; Li et al., 2007) (Fig. 1).

Paleoclimate change may play an important role as a background factor that led to the phased evolution of the Jehol Biota (e.g., Ohta et al., 2011). However, compared with the study of the sedimentary period of the Yixian and Jiufotang Formations in western Liaoning, the study of biotic radiation and ecosystem evolution during the early development of the Jehol Biota is obviously relatively weak (e.g., Amiot et al., 2011; Ohta et al., 2011; Yang et al., 2013; Ding et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2021a). In addition, the Early Cretaceous strata in northern Hebei still need to be further investigated and correlated. For example, the precise division and correlation among the Dabeigou and Dadianzi Formations (DDFs) in the Luanping Basin, the Huajiying Formation in the Senjitu-Sichakou Basin and the Yixian Formation in western Liaoning are still controversial (Ji, 2002; Tian et al., 2004a; Jin et al., 2008; Wang and Ji, 2009; Niu et al., 2015; Pan et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2021b; Yu et al., 2021b). These problems restrict our understanding of the early radiation evolution of the Jehol Biota and its relationship with climate changes, especially how the biota in this period changed from the atypical Jehol Biota in the sedimentary period of the Dabeigou Formation to the typical Jehol Biota in the sedimentary period of the Dadianzi Formation.

Climate change, especially temperature, has a significant impact on the evolution of biota (e.g., Zhao et al., 2020). Temperature is an important parameter for diversification and species coexistence in plant and animal communities (Peters et al., 2016). However, only a few studies have preliminarily discussed the relationship between paleoclimatic and environmental changes and faunal turnover during the early development of the Jehol Biota via geochemical and sporopollen evidence (e.g., Zou et al., 2008; Ohta et al., 2011; Qin et al., 2021a; Yu et al., 2021b). For instance, Ohta et al. (2011) and Qin et al. (2021a) preliminarily proposed that the increasingly warm paleoclimate may have acted as one of the important factors that contributed to the early development of the Jehol Biota. However, the abundant lacustrine biota that are sensitive to paleoecological changes still lack in-depth research, especially in regard to their paleoclimatic aspects.

Microbiota, such as ostracods, are relatively abundant, rapidly evolving, and easily preserved as fossils during the Mesozoic-Cenozoic period and thus provide an excellent opportunity to evaluate the relation between biotic evolution and climate change (Hou et al., 2002; Sames and Horne, 2012; Smith et al., 2015; Marchegiano et al., 2020). For instance, the body size of some lacustrine biota, such as ostracods, seems tightly linked to the temperature conditions, i.e., they evolve to smaller body sizes when the temperature increases (e.g., Hunt and Roy, 2006; Hunt et al., 2010; Merckx et al., 2018). The Lower Cretaceous DDFs and their equivalent strata in northern Hebei yield abundant, well-preserved and continuously present ostracods, spinicaudatans, spores and pollen, and other fossils, thereby providing a unique opportunity to reveal the early evolutionary radiation process of the Jehol Biota and its relation with climate change.

Section snippets

Luanping Basin

The Luanping Basin is one of the small, terrestrial extensional basins in the Yanshan structural belt (Fig. 1), and it formed during the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous as a result of tectonic and magmatic activities (Wu et al., 2000, Wu et al., 2004; Zhang et al., 2007; Wei et al., 2012). The paleolatitude of the Luanping Basin (North China Block) during the Early Cretaceous was approximately 40–50°N, which is slightly higher than its present latitude (~41°N) (e.g., Ren et al., 2018; Yi et

Paleontological analysis

A total of 292 samples were collected in intervals of approximately 1.0 to 1.5 m from the DDFs of the Zhangjiagou section of the Luanping Basin for microfossil analysis, 46 samples of which contained abundant ostracods, and four samples yielded charophytes. Each sample (300–500 g) was soaked in water and/or hydrogen peroxide, if necessary, washed through sieves and picked under a stereomicroscope. The carapaces and valves selected for illustration of the DDFs were sputter-coated with gold and

Ostracods

Preliminary taxonomic analysis of nonmarine ostracods from the Lower Cretaceous DDFs from the Zhangjiagou section, as well as other sections from the Luanping Basin revealed 18 genera, including Cypridea Bosquet, Yumenia Hou, Luanpingella Su and Yang, Pseudoparacypridopsis Anderson, Daurina Sinitsa, Yanshanina Pang, Ocrocypris Zhang, Eoparacypris Anderson, Limnocypridea Lübimova, Djungarica Galeeva, Darwinula Brady and Robertson, Alicenula Rossetti and Martens, Rhinocypris Anderson, Timiriasevia

Stratigraphic correlation

There are still some controversies about the stratigraphic correlation of the “Jehol Group” between northern Hebei and western Liaoning and even among the different basins in northern Hebei, which thus far limits our knowledge of the early and middle stages of the Jehol Biota (e.g., Ji, 2002; Tian et al., 2004a; Zhang et al., 2005a; Pan et al., 2013; Qin et al., 2018; Yu et al., 2021b; Zhang et al., 2021a). For example, Zhang et al. (2005b) suggested that the DDFs are part of the lowermost part

Conclusions

The abundant ostracods associated with charophytes, spinicaudatans, insects, fishes, spores and pollen from the Lower Cretaceous Dabeigou Formation and the overlying Dadianzi Formation in the Luanping Basin and the equivalent Huajiying Formation in the Senjitu-Sichakou Basin are evaluated for their paleoclimatic signals. The ages of these formations are approximately 135 to 127 Ma, corresponding to the middle Valanginian to early Barremian. The expanded geographic distribution, increasing

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 41790452 and 41688103), the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFC0605403), the Chinese “111” Project (B20011), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (590121018), and the Program of China Geological Survey (grant nos. DD20190009 and DD20160207).

Declaration of Competing Interest

None.

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank Prof. Qiqing Pang (Hebei GEO University), Prof. Chunlin Sun (Jilin University), and associate Prof. Xuri Wang (Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences) for their assistance with fieldwork. We also sincerely thank Yankang Xu, Feng Wei, Guannan Wang, Anqi Gu, Xin Xiong, Baoxu Wu, and Jizhe Du for their help in the field. The authors sincerely thank Dr. Benjamin Sames for his assistanceand support of Qin at the University of Vienna. We are very grateful to

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