Publication Date:
2006-05-06
Description:
Ediacaran assemblages immediately predate the Cambrian explosion of metazoans and should have played a crucial role in this radiation. Their wider relationships, however, have remained refractory and difficult to integrate with early metazoan phylogeny. Here, we describe a frondlike fossil, Stromatoveris (S. psygmoglena sp. nov.), from the Lower Cambrian Chengjiang Lagerstatte (Yunnan, China) that is strikingly similar to Ediacaran vendobionts. The exquisite preservation reveals closely spaced branches, probably ciliated, that appear to represent precursors of the diagnostic comb rows of ctenophores. Therefore, this finding has important implications for the early evolution of this phylum and related diploblasts, some of which independently evolved a frondose habit.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Shu, D-G -- Morris, S Conway -- Han, J -- Li, Y -- Zhang, X-L -- Hua, H -- Zhang, Z-F -- Liu, J-N -- Guo, J-F -- Yao, Y -- Yasui, K -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2006 May 5;312(5774):731-4.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Early Life Institute and Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069, China. elidgshu@nwu.edu.cn〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16675697" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Biological Evolution
;
China
;
*Fossils
;
Geologic Sediments
;
Invertebrates/*anatomy & histology/*classification
;
Phylogeny
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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