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Paleozoic-Mesozoic crayfish from Antarctica: Earliest evidence of freshwater decapod crustaceans

¹ Department of Geological Sciences and Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210
² Geology Department, Box 6001, Station B, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235
³ Department of Geosciences, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201
⁴ Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309

Discovery of an Early Permian claw from Antarctica extends the fossil record of crayfish by 65 m.y. and demonstrates that decapod crustaceans had radiated into freshwater habitats by the late Paleozoic. Burrows in Lower Triassic rocks of Antarctica are among the oldest apparently constructed by crayfish. Their morphology is similar to modern crayfish burrows, and this demonstrates that burrowing behavior was established early in the evolution of this group. The new discoveries show that the earliest Permian crayfish were distributed in high paleolatitudes of southernmost Pangea, where they lived in freshwater lakes fed by glacial meltwater. Modern crayfish habitat, used as a guide to crayfish temperature tolerance, indicates that summer temperatures of streams and lakes near the South Pole that supported the crayfish probably reached 10–20 °C during Permian-Triassic interglacial intervals.

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