PIs: William I. Ausich and Yu-Ping Chin School of Earth Sciences The Ohio State University This project will expand our initial studies on taxon-specific biomarkers that we have extracted from Mississippian crinoids. To date, we have established that: 1, taxon-specific organic molecules can be extracted from individual fossil specimens; 2, these molecules are consistent for different specimens of the same species, different from other taxa, and distinctly different from molecules from enclosing sediments; 3, extracted fossil molecules display a phylogenetic significance with more closely related taxa having more similar molecules; and 4, extracted molecules are most probably a substituted anthraquinone, similar to classes of molecules known to be produced by living crinoids. These results are from analysis of a limited number of fossil specimens from two localities. This project is designed to establish the feasibility of our earlier work on a larger scale and to establish the significance of the phylogenetic information preserved in these extracted molecules. Specific objectives include: 1, determine the structure and identity of the preserved molecules in Paleozoic crinoids; 2, because sampling is destructive, determine the least amount of material needed for analysis; 3, determine the resolution of the phylogenetic signal in these biomarkers. The phylogenetic significance will be tested with the following sampling design: 1, analyze crinoids from other Mississippian occurrences to determine consistency and existence of biomarkers in coeval settings; 2, examine crinoids from the Ordovician to the Jurassic to assess the phylogenetic significance through time; and 3, as possible, molecules will be extracted from living crinoids. This SGER work will provide graduate student support and funding for laboratory supplies and chemical analyses from the Ohio State University Chemical Instrumentation Center. Analyses will include UV-Vis light spectroscopy, Micromass LC-TOF mass spectrometer in ESI, Finnegan Trace GC mass spectrometer in split mode, and Cary Eclipse spectrofluorimeter in 3-D Excitation-Emission mode, which will include development of our own model around the PARAFAC framework that is specific for the proposed research. Results of the proposed research have the promise to establish an entirely new research field and to transform the way paleontologists study fossil echinoderms, if not fossils in general. However, the true significance cannot be determined until a wider array of hypotheses is tested with many more analyses, as proposed herein.
