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Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Volume 53, 2025

Diving Deeper: Leveraging the Chondrichthyan Fossil Record to Investigate Environmental, Ecological, and Biological Change

  • Sora L. Kim1, Meghan A. Balk2,3,4, Elizabeth C. Sibert5 and Lisa Whitenack6
  • 1Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of California, Merced, California, USA; email: [email protected] 2Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 3School of Information, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA 4Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA 5Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA 6Department of Biology, Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania, USA
  • Vol. 53:223-250 (Volume publication date May 2025)
  • First published as a Review in Advance on December 23, 2024
  • Copyright © 2025 by the author(s).
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information.

Abstract

The extensive chondrichthyan fossil record spans 400+ million years and has a global distribution. Paleontological studies provide a foundation of description and taxonomy to support deeper forays into ecology and evolution considering geographic, morphologic, and functional changes through time with nonanalog species and climate states. Although chondrichthyan teeth are most studied, analyses of dermal denticle metrics and soft tissue imprints are increasing. Recent methodological advances in morphology and geochemistry are elucidating fine-scale details, whereas large datasets and ecological modeling are broadening taxonomic, temporal, and geographic perspectives. The combination of ecological metrics and modeling with environmental reconstruction and climate simulations is opening new horizons to explore form and function, demographic dynamics, and food web structure in ancient marine ecosystems. Ultimately, the traits and taxa that endured or perished during the many catastrophic upheaval events in Earth's history contribute to conservation paleobiology, which is a much-needed perspective for extant chondrichthyans.

  • ▪  The longevity and abundance of the chondrichthyan fossil record elucidates facets of ecological, evolutionary, and environmental histories.
  • ▪  Though lacking postcranial, mineralized skeletons, dental enameloid and dermal denticles exquisitely preserve morphology and geochemistry.
  • ▪  Technical advances in imaging, geochemistry, and modeling clarify the linkages between form and function with respect to physiology, diet, and environment.
  • ▪  Conservation efforts can benefit from the temporal and spatial perspective of chondrichthyan persistence through past global change events.

Keyword(s): diversity, extinction, isotope, morphology, paleobiology, shark
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Diving Deeper: Leveraging the Chondrichthyan Fossil Record to Investigate Environmental, Ecological, and Biological Change
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 53, 223 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-040523-010455
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