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Updated: Jul 5, 2026

Removal of Exogenous Materials from the Outer Portion of Frozen Cores to Investigate the Ancient Biological Communities Harbored Inside
Published on: July 3, 2016
Cold-seep mollusks are older than the general marine mollusk fauna
Steffen Kiel1, Crispin T S Little
1School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. steffen.kiel@gmx.de
Abstract:
The origin and possible antiquity of faunas at deep-sea hydrothermal vents and seeps have been debated since their discovery. We used the fossil record of seep mollusks to show that the living seep genera have significantly longer geologic ranges than the marine mollusks in general, but have ranges similar to those of deep-sea taxa, suggesting that seep faunas may be shaped by the factors that drive the evolution of life in the deep sea in general. Our data indicate that deep-sea anoxic/dysoxic events did not affect seep faunas, casting doubt on the suggested anoxic nature and/or global extent of these events.
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