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Didazoonidae
Didazoonidae is a family of Vetulicolian chordates containing the species ''Didazoon haoae'' and ''Pomatrum ventralis''. Their fossils are from the Maotianshan shales Cambrian Lagerstätte A Lagerstätte (, from ''Lager'' 'storage, lair' '' Stätte'' 'place'; plural ''Lagerstätten'') is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossils with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues. These for .... References Vetulicolia Prehistoric chordate families Cambrian first appearances Cambrian extinctions {{chordate-stub Animal families ...
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Vetulicolia
VetulicoliaThe taxon name, Vetulocolia, is derived from the type genus, ''Vetulicola'', which is a compound Latin word composed of ''vetuli'' "old" and ''cola'' "inhabitant". is a taxon (either phylum or subphylum in rank) encompassing several extinct Cambrian organisms. The vetulicolian body comprises two parts: a voluminous anterior forebody, tipped with an anteriorly positioned mouth and lined with a row of five round to oval-shaped features on each lateral side, which have been interpreted as gills (or at least openings in the vicinity of the pharynx); and a posterior section that primitively comprises seven segments and functions as a tail. All vetulicolians lack preserved appendages of any kind, having no legs, feelers or even eyes. The area where the anterior and posterior parts join is constricted. Their affinity has been uncertain; they have been considered to represent stem- and crown-group arthropods, stem-group vertebrates, and early deuterostomes. The general scienti ...
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Nesonektris Aldridgei
''Nesonektris aldridgei'' is an extinct deuterostome chordate from the Late Botomian-aged Emu Bay Shale Lagerstätte in Kangaroo Island, Australia. So far, it is the fourth described vetulicolian that is not restricted to the Maotianshan Shales (the other three being ''Ooedigera'' of Sirius Passet, ''Banffia'' of the Burgess Shale, and ''Skeemella'' of the Wheeler Shale). Anatomy ''N. aldridgei'' is known from several incomplete fossils which suggest that, in life, it was a fairly large animal (when compared to other vetulicolians). The largest fossil is about 150 millimetres long, leading researchers to estimate that that individual was about 170 millimetres long. The exquisitely preserved fossils show that running the length inside the tail was a notochord, thereby demonstrating the animal's chordate affinities as being related to tunicates. The forebody, and overall form are similar to vetulicolids of Vetulicolidae, though, its researchers do not have confidence to pla ...
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Yuyuanozoon Magnificissimi
''Yuyuanozoon magnificissimi'' is the largest known vetulicolian, with the holotype (and only known specimen) measuring about 202 millimeters in length. In life, it would have been an egg-shaped animal with a long cylindrical tail. The body is divided into 6 segments, with a gill opening (that has gill filaments extending out from each opening) placed symmetrically on each side of every body segment starting at the second segment. The cylindrical tail is divided into 7 segments, and differs from the tails of all other known vetulicolians (not being flattened like vetulicolids like ''Vetulicola'', and not oar-like or leaf-like like those of the didazoonids like ''Didazoon'', and is unlike the tails of banffozoans like ''Banffia'' and ''Skeemella''). The details of the tail anatomy, and of the gill openings with gill filaments currently leave ''Y. magnificissimi'' as ''incertae sedis''. Etymology The generic name translates as "Animal of Yu Yuan," Yu Yuan being an ancient name for ...
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Early Cambrian
The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million years ago (mya) to the beginning of the Ordovician Period mya. Its subdivisions, and its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established as "Cambrian series" by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name for 'Cymru' (Wales), where Britain's Cambrian rocks are best exposed. Sedgwick identified the layer as part of his task, along with Roderick Murchison, to subdivide the large "Transition Series", although the two geologists disagreed for a while on the appropriate categorization. The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of sedimentary deposits, sites of exceptional preservation where "soft" parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells. As a result, our understanding of the Cambrian bi ...
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Didazoon Haoae
''Didazoon haoae'' is an extinct species of vetulicolid vetulicolian described by Shu, et al. based on fossils found in the Qiongzhusi (Chiungchussu) Formation, Yu'anshan Member (Eoredlichia zone), Lower Cambrian, in the Dabanqiao area (Kunming), about 60 km northwest of Chengjiang, China. The fossils show that the body of the animal was covered in a thin, flexible cuticle. The anterior part of the body was divided into six segments, with fairly broad membranes separating the segments, and the posterior part of the body was divided into seven segments. The constriction between the anterior and posterior parts of the animal shows creasing, and the authors hypothesize that it was quite flexible. The fossils are interpreted as showing a large anterior opening, presumably a mouth, a spacious anterior cavity, an alimentary canal, possibly voluminous in the anterior section, and a narrow intestine in the posterior section, straight or coiled (in one specimen). There are five stru ...
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Pomatrum Ventralis
''Pomatrum'' is an extinct vetulicolian, the senior synonym of ''Xidazoon''; the latter taxon was described by Shu, et al. (1999) based on fossils found in the Qiongzhusi (Chiungchussu) Formation, Yu'anshan Member (Eoredlichia zone), Lower Cambrian, Haikou, (Kunming), about 50 km west of Chengjiang, China. It has been likened to the chordate '' Pipiscius''. The fossils show that the body of the animal was divided into two parts. The anterior part of the body is moderately inflated, with a prominent mouth circlet. It has faint transverse divisions towards the front, but is otherwise smooth. The mouth circlet consists of about 30 plates divided into inner and outer regions. The anterior section has five structures on each side, which are interpreted as gills. A dark region running close to the ventral and posterior margins is interpreted as an endostyle. The condition of the anterior portion of the fossils suggests that it was thin-walled, i.e., that the anterior portion was l ...
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Chordate
A chordate () is an animal of the phylum Chordata (). All chordates possess, at some point during their larval or adult stages, five synapomorphies, or primary physical characteristics, that distinguish them from all the other taxa. These five synapomorphies include a notochord, dorsal hollow nerve cord, endostyle or thyroid, pharyngeal slits, and a post-anal tail. The name “chordate” comes from the first of these synapomorphies, the notochord, which plays a significant role in chordate structure and movement. Chordates are also Bilateral symmetry, bilaterally symmetric, have a coelom, possess a circulatory system, and exhibit Metameric, metameric segmentation. In addition to the morphological characteristics used to define chordates, analysis of genome sequences has identified two conserved signature indels (CSIs) in their proteins: cyclophilin-like protein and mitochondrial inner membrane protease ATP23, which are exclusively shared by all vertebrates, tunicates and cep ...
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Maotianshan Shales
The Maotianshan Shales are a series of Cambrian, Early Cambrian deposits in the Chiungchussu Formation, famous for their ''Lagerstätte, Konservat Lagerstätten'', deposits known for the exceptional preservation of fossilized organisms or traces. The Maotianshan Shales form one of some forty Cambrian fossil locations worldwide exhibiting exquisite preservation of rarely preserved, non-mineralized soft tissue, comparable to the fossils of the Burgess Shale. They take their name from Maotianshan Hill (, Literal meaning: Hat Sky Mountain) in Chengjiang County, Yunnan Province, China. The most famous assemblage of organisms are referred to as the Chengjiang biota for the multiple scattered fossil sites in Chengjiang. The age of the Chengjiang Lagerstätte is locally termed Qiongzhusian, a stage correlated to the late Atdabanian Stage in Siberian sequences of the middle of the Early Cambrian. The shales date to ≤. The shales also contain the slightly younger Guanshan biota from Mal ...
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Cambrian
The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million years ago (mya) to the beginning of the Ordovician Period mya. Its subdivisions, and its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established as "Cambrian series" by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name for 'Cymru' (Wales), where Britain's Cambrian rocks are best exposed. Sedgwick identified the layer as part of his task, along with Roderick Murchison, to subdivide the large "Transition Series", although the two geologists disagreed for a while on the appropriate categorization. The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of sedimentary deposits, sites of exceptional preservation where "soft" parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells. As a result, our understanding of the Ca ...
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Lagerstätte
A Lagerstätte (, from ''Lager'' 'storage, lair' '' Stätte'' 'place'; plural ''Lagerstätten'') is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossils with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues. These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus delaying the decomposition of both gross and fine biological features until long after a durable impression was created in the surrounding matrix. ''Lagerstätten'' span geological time from the Neoproterozoic era to the present. Worldwide, some of the best examples of near-perfect fossilization are the Cambrian Maotianshan shales and Burgess Shale, the Silurian Waukesha Biota, the Devonian Hunsrück Slates and Gogo Formation, the Carboniferous Mazon Creek, the Jurassic Posidonia Shale and Solnhofen Limestone, the Cretaceous Yixian, Santana, and Agua Nueva formations, the Eocene Green River Formation, the Miocene Foulden Maar and Ashfall F ...
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Prehistoric Chordate Families
Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared 5000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently. In the early Bronze Age, Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley Civilisation, and ancient Egypt were the first civilizations to develop their own scripts and to keep historical records, with their neighbors following. Most other civilizations reached the end of prehistory during the following Iron Age. T ...
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Cambrian First Appearances
The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million years ago (mya) to the beginning of the Ordovician Period mya. Its subdivisions, and its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established as "Cambrian series" by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name for 'Cymru' (Wales), where Britain's Cambrian rocks are best exposed. Sedgwick identified the layer as part of his task, along with Roderick Murchison, to subdivide the large "Transition Series", although the two geologists disagreed for a while on the appropriate categorization. The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of sedimentary deposits, sites of exceptional preservation where "soft" parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells. As a result, our understanding of the Cambrian biolo ...
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