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Eramosa Lagerstätte—Exceptionally preserved soft-bodied biotas with shallow-marine shelly and bioturbating organisms (Silurian, Ontario, Canada)

¹ Department of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum and Department of Geology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C6, Canada
² Department of Geology, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
³ Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada
⁴ Department of Earth Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada

The middle Silurian Eramosa Lagerstätte of Ontario, Canada, preserves taxonomically and taphonomically diverse biotas including articulated conodont skeletons and heterostracan fish, annelids and arthropods with soft body parts, and a diverse marine flora. Soft tissues are preserved as calcium phosphate and carbon films, the latter possibly stabilized by early diagenetic sulfurization. It is significant that the biotas also include a decalcified, autochthonous shelly marine fauna, and trace fossils. This association of exceptionally preserved and more typical fossils distinguishes the Eramosa from other Silurian shallow-marine Lagerstätten, such as the Waukesha Lagerstätte, and suggests that the Eramosa is not the product of exceptional preservation in an atypical environment, a bias claimed for many post-Cambrian Lagerstätten. The Eramosa Lagerstätte may provide a more reliable, balanced measure of what has been lost from the Silurian fossil record.

Key Words: Eramosa Lagerstätte • soft-bodied preservation • conodont and heterostracan vertebrates • shelly marine fauna • trace fossils • middle Silurian • Ontario • Canada