Report from the 8th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans, Zaragoza (Spain), June 2022
Article number: 26.3.a39
https://doi.org/10.26879/1319
Copyright Paleontological Society, September 2023
Proceedings of the 8th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans
Author biographies
Plain-language and multi-lingual abstracts
PDF version
Submission: 10 July 2023. Acceptance: 25 September 2023.
ABSTRACT
Decapod crustaceans are an important component in modern ecosystems with a rich fossil record spanning more than 400 million years. Last summer (19th-24th June 2022) the 8th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans took place in Zaragoza (Spain), a meeting covering all aspects of studies on fossil decapod crustaceans, including information from modern representatives. The Symposium was organized by the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Zaragoza with collaboration of organizers from universities of the Basque Country, Alabama, and Barcelona, and the support of the regional Government of Aragón.
Samuel Zamora. Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (IGME-CSIC), E-50006, Zaragoza, Spain and Departamento de Ciencias de la Tierra-IUCA, Universidad de Zaragoza, E-50009, Zaragoza, Spain. Corresponding author. s.zamora@igme.es
Fernando A. Ferratges. Departamento de Ciencias de la Tierra-IUCA, Universidad de Zaragoza, E-50009, Zaragoza, Spain. fer.afk87@gmail.com
Álvaro García-Penas. Departamento de Ciencias de la Tierra-IUCA, Universidad de Zaragoza, E-50009, Zaragoza, Spain. alvarogpenas@gmail.com
Marcos Aurell. Departamento de Ciencias de la Tierra-IUCA, Universidad de Zaragoza, E-50009, Zaragoza, Spain. maurell@unizar.es
Keywords: Decapoda; Mesozoic; Cenozoic; evolution, field trip
Final citation: Zamora, Samuel, Ferratges, Fernando A., García-Penas, Álvaro, and Aurell, Marcos. 2023. Report from the 8th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans, Zaragoza (Spain), June 2022. Palaeontologia Electronica, 26(3):a39.
https://doi.org/10.26879/1319
palaeo-electronica.org/content/2023/3984-symposium-on-fossil-decapods
Copyright: September 2023 Paleontological Society.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), which permits users to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, provided it is not used for commercial purposes and the original author and source are credited, with indications if any changes are made.
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
THE SYMPOSIUM
The symposium was attended by thirty researchers and passionate palaeontological amateurs from different countries including the Netherlands, Spain, France, Italy, USA, Germany, France, Slovenia, Slovakia, Argentina, and Japan (Figure 1). The program consisted of two days of oral presentations and three days of field trips. The first two days (20th-21st June), 27 oral presentations covering important aspects of decapod systematics and palaeobiology took place, of which the abstracts were published in an abstract volume (Zamora et al., 2022). Each day of oral sessions were introduced by one plenary talk. The first lecture was presented by Dr. Javier Luque (University of Cambridge) with the title “The evolution of compound eyes across extant and fossil crabs” (Luque et al., 2022). In the talk, Dr. Luque and collaborators reviewed eyes preserved in different groups of crabs with exceptional discoveries from fossil material and their implications to the evolution of eyes in decapods. The second lecture was presented by Dr. Matúš Hyžný with the title “Fossil burrowing shrimps: an overview” (Hyžný, 2022). He reviewed the current knowledge of fossil burrowing shrimps, which are important bioturbators in modern and ancient environments. Since their presumed Mesozoic origin, they have acted as ecosystem engineers, impacting their environment in an unprecedented way by changing the physical-chemical conditions of marine sea floors.
The two days talks were followed by three days of field trips (22nd-24th June) (Figure 2). The first trip was focused on Barremian-Aptian shallow-marine decapod communities from the Oliete Subbasin (Maestrazgo Basin, East Spain). During the field trip, García-Penas et al. (2022) introduced the decapod localities found in the restricted Oliete subbasin, dated as Lower Cretaceous. It preserves an extraordinary record of shallow-marine decapod associations (Figure 3)
and in some instances their trace fossils. The second day, participants travelled to the Southern Pyrenees, where Ferratges et al. (2022) illustrated exceptional Eocene outcrops with highly diversified communities of brachyurans (Figure 4). 
Finally, on the third day, López-Horgue et al. (2022) introduced the Albian outcrops of Koskobilo (Navarre) (Figure 5), which preserve a highly diversified fauna associated with reef environments (Figure 6). We also visited a small outcrop in Egiarreta (Navarre) preserving Albian raninids in siderite concretions (Figure 7).
The meeting served as an important event for discussion on the state-of-the-art of fossil decapod crustaceans and to receive important feedback from colleagues around the world. Key discussions identified future prospects of research for fossil decapod crustaceans, including the inclusion of fossils in molecular phylogenies based on modern taxa, the combination of fossils and sedimentological data to reconstruct ancient ecosystems, and the use of state-of-the-art techniques in visualizing fossil material. We hope that meetings like this will help improve the attractiveness of fossil decapod crustaceans as a research topic for future generations.
 |
 |
 |
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported by the projects PID2021‐122612OB‐100, subsidised by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the European Regional Development Fund, and Project E18-20R Aragosaurus: Recursos Geológicos y Paleoambientes of the government of Aragón-FEDER.
REFERENCES
Bell, T. 1863. A Monograph of the Fossil Malacostracous Crustacea of Great Britain, Pt. II, Crustacea of the Gault and Greensand. Palaeontographical Society Monograph, London, 40 pp., 11 pls.
d'Archiac, A. 1850. Histoire des progrès de la géologie de 1834 à 1849, tome 3: Formation nummulitique, roches ignées ou pyrogènes des époques quaternaire et tertiaire. p. 1–624
Ferratges, F.A., García-Penas, Á., Aurell, M., and Zamora, S. 2022. Distribution of Decapod communities from the early Eocene of the South-Pyrenean Central Unit (Tremp-Graus Basin, Spanish Pyrenees). In Zamora, S. Ferratges, F.A., García-Penas, A., and Aurell, M. (eds.), 8th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans. Field Guidebook. Palaeontological Publications, 1:113–136.
García-Penas, A., Ferratges, F.A., Aurell, M., and Zamora, S. 2022. Barremian-Aptian shallow-marine Decapod communities from the Oliete subbasin (Maestrazgo Basin, E Spain). In Zamora, S. Ferratges, F.A., García-Penas, A., and Aurell, M. (eds.), 8th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans. Field Guidebook. Palaeontological Publications, 1:99–111.
Hyžný, M. 2022. Fossil burrowing shrimps: An overview. In Zamora, S. Ferratges, F.A., García-Penas, A., and Aurell, M. (eds.), 8th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans. Field Guidebook. Palaeontological Publications, 1:11–20.
López-Horgue, M.A., Klompmaker, A.A., and Fraaije, R.H.B. 2022. Decapod crustacean diversity and habitats in the Upper Albian deposits of Navarre (Western Pyrenees, Spain): The Koskobilo quarry limestones and their coeval deposits. In Zamora, S. Ferratges, F.A., García-Penas, A., and Aurell, M. (eds.), 8th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans. Field Guidebook. Palaeontological Publications, 1:137–162.
Luque, J., Bracken-Grissom, H. D., Briggs, D.E.G., Jenkins, K. M., Lindgren, J., Ortega-Hernández, J., Palmer, A. R., Porter, M. L., and Wolfe, J. M. 2022. The evolution of compound eyes across extant and fossil crabs. In Zamora, S. Ferratges, F.A., García-Penas, A., and Aurell, M. (eds.), 8th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans. Field Guidebook. Palaeontological Publications, 1:21–23.
M'Coy, F. 1849. On the Classification of some British Fossil Crustacea, with notices of new Forms in the University Collection at Cambridge: The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 2(4):330–335.
Van Bakel, B.W.M., Guinot, D., Artal, P., Fraaije, R.H.B., and Jagt, J.W.M. 2012. A revision of the Palaeocorystoidea and the phylogeny of raninoidian crabs (Crustacea, Decapoda, Brachyura, Podotremata). Zootaxa, 3215:1–216.
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3215.1.1
Zamora, S., Aurell, M., Veitch, M., Saulsbury, J., López-Horgue, M.A., Ferratges F.A., Arz, J.A., and Baumiller, T.K. 2018. Environmental distribution of post-Palaeozoic crinoids from the Iberian and south-Pyrenean basins, NE Spain. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 63(4):779–794.
https://doi.org/10.4202/app.00520.2018
Zamora, S., Ferratges, F.A., García-Penas, A., and Aurell, M. 2022. 8th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans. Field Guidebook. Palaeontological Publications, 1:1–165.
