Evolution Research - General Evolution News

The unusual mollusks of oceanic cold seeps - strange clams, mussels and sea snails that thrive in the sulfur and methane-rich environments - are on average older than the marine mollusk community as a whole, according to a new report in the 8 September issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

On average, the first appearance of cold seep mollusk genera in the geological record is a full epoch earlier than that of marine mollusks in general, according to Steffen Kiel and Crispin Little of the University of Leeds (UK).

These findings indicate that the long evolutionary history of the seep mollusks is more similar to that of other deep-sea animals than to some of their mollusk contemporaries from other parts of the oceans.

Cold seeps may have been - and continue to be - safe harbors for the mollusks, protecting them from mass extinctions and possible abrupt oxygen changes in the seas, the researchers found. However, many deep-sea species outside of the cold seeps have also managed to ride out these changes. [Sulphur, Evolution News]
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Based on "Cold-Seep Mollusks Are Older Than the General Marine Mollusk Fauna" (Abstract)

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