Vertebrates from the Middle Devonian of Kentucky: Prelude to a Crisis

Vertebrates from the Middle Devonian of Kentucky: Prelude to a Crisis

The Late Devonian Mass Extinction is one of the more poorly understood of the Big Five mass extinction events of the last 542 million years. This event devastated several groups of fish and many different types of marine invertebrates, and there are half a dozen proposed causes, ranging from anoxic oceans to a slowdown in the birth of new species. However, the buildup to this event has not been particularly well-studied. Furthermore, our understanding of Middle Devonian vertebrate diversity, especially on the western side of the Appalachian Basin, is severely lacking. Over the past few years, working with several students, I have sampled a poorly known bonebed in Estill County; now, as COVID hopefully ebbs, I will be able to expand our search to additional new localities that are under sampled and understudied for Devonian vertebrates, which are already poorly recorded in Kentucky.