Emsian (Lower Devonian) Rugosa of Nevada: Revision of Systematics and Stratigraphic Ranges, and Reassessment of Faunal Provincialism

Lower-Middle Devonian rugose coral faunas of Nevada: Contribution to an understanding of the "barren" E Zone and Choteč Event in the Great Basin

“…The present paper establishes that the E zone was not barren. It will also show that the change from Lower to Middle Devonian coral faunas, which was concurrent with the demise of the Pragian-Emsian Nevada coral province (Pedder & Murphy 2004), involved three steps, and that the middle of these corresponds closely to the Choteč Event of central Europe.…”

“…They are costatus Zone age (Klapper 1977 and elsewhere) and, on conodont-based correlations, are a zone above the partitus Subzone ptenophyllid corals of central Nevada. This indicates that the arrival in central Nevada of brachiopods of an Old World provincial affinity was later than the termination of the Pragian-Emsian Great Basin coral province (Pedder & Murphy 2004), which occurred in two steps in patulus-partitus Subzones time.…”

Evaluating Devonian bioregionalization: quantifying biogeographic areas

“…The Middle Devonian Cordilleran region of the Old World realm shares 65% of its genera with the Middle Devonian Eastern Americas realm (Table 3). The Middle Devonian annexation of the Nevada province (Oliver 1990;Oliver et al 1996;Boucot and Blodgett 2001;Pedder and Murphy 2004) blurred the diagnosis of both units. With the purported loss of the Nevada province, many "Cordilleran" taxa (such as Variatrypa) were observed within the Eastern Americas realm and have, as a corollary, weakened the unit's relationship the Old World realm and rendered it nonmonophyletic (Fig.…”

“…Natural areas are biogeographic units encompassing an "area of endemism" (see Lindler [2001] and Wiley and Lieberman [2011] for discussion) and are difficult to discern for the Paleozoic, as resolved phylogenies of constituent taxa are required (Rosen 1988a,b;Lieberman and Eldredge 1996;Ebach and Edgecombe 2001;Lieberman 2005Lieberman , 2012Rode and Lieberman 2005). Given that Devonian cladistic studies are rare, the abilities of biogeographers to distinguish artifact from natural classification has been limited, resulting in much revision and reclassification (e.g., Bigey 1985;Blodgett et al 1990;Pedder and Murphy 2004). To formalize a Devonian area classification, that is a bioregionalization, and create a standardized frame for future Devonian studies, the interim bioregionalization (Fig.…”

Rare stromatoporoids from the Lower Devonian (Emsian) of Nevada, and their biostratigraphic and paleobiogeographic significance

“…Although rugose corals are abundant in strata of the study area (Pedder and Murphy, 2004), there are very few stromatoporoids. This situation is most likely due to the fact that stromatoporoids lived in shallower water than most corals (e.g., Walker and Alberstadt, 1975), and/or because corals were better able to resist the effects of fine-grained carbonate or siliciclastic sediments suspended in the water.…”