Data for: An ocean of small grabbers: tooth and jaw morphology provides insights into the trophic ecology of an Early Cretaceous fish assemblage from the Toolebuc Formation, western Queensland

Full description

Background [Extract from Related publication]:

The Early Cretaceous Eromanga Sea covered an area of approximately 1,700,000 km2 of eastern Australia and was home to diverse assemblages of marine organisms. While several large fish species have been described from the Eromanga Sea, broader fish assemblages and their ecological niches remain understudied. Here we present morphometric analyses of teeth, jaws, and vertebrae from a fossil assemblage consisting of disarticulated microvertebrates from the Albian Toolebuc Formation -of the Eromanga Sea. We compared this fossil assemblage to those of two adjacent modern fish assemblages, the Great Barrier Reef and coastal New Zealand.

Methodology

The full methodology is available in the Open Access publication from the Related publications link below.

Dataset contents

• Measurements and images of morphological data of fishes from the GBR, NZ, and Toolebuc Formation (fossils).

The image archive contains fossil and modern specimen images in a variety of formats including TIFF, BMP, PNG, JPG/JPEG and PDF. Associated metadata and instrument output files are provided in TXT format where generated by the imaging equipment.

Software/equipment used to create/collect the data:

• Hitachi TM4000 Plus Scanning Electron Microscope - Used to collect images of fossil specimens
• ImageJ 1.54g - Used to measure dimensions of both modern and fossil specimens.
• Canon EOS 450D with a Canon EF-S 18-55 mm lens - Used to collect images of modern specimens that was not available in published literature.

Software/equipment used to manipulate/analyse the data:

• Microsoft® Excel® for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2601 Build 16.0.19628.20166) 64-bit - Used to create tables to facilitate data analysis.
• R 4.5.0 - Used to analyse the data.