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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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botomian
Cambrian Stage 4 is the still unnamed fourth stage of the Cambrian and the upper stage of Cambrian Series 2. It follows Cambrian Stage 3 and lies below the Wuliuan. The lower boundary has not been formally defined by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. One proposal is the first appearance of two trilobite genera, ''Olenellus'' or ''Redlichia''. Another proposal is the first appearance of the trilobite species '' Arthricocephalus chauveaui''. Both proposals will set the lower boundary close to million years ago. The upper boundary corresponds to the beginning of the Wuliuan. Naming The International Commission on Stratigraphy The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), sometimes referred to unofficially as the "International Stratigraphic Commission", is a daughter or major subcommittee grade scientific daughter organization that concerns itself with stratigra ... has not named the fourth stage of the Cambrian yet. In the widely used Siberian nomenclature stage ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sirius Passet
Sirius Passet is a Cambrian Lagerstätte in Peary Land, Greenland. The Sirius Passet Lagerstätte was named after the Sirius sledge patrol that operates in North Greenland. It comprises six places in Nansen Land, on the east shore of J.P. Koch Fjord in the far north of Greenland. It was discovered in 1984 by A. Higgins of the Geological Survey of Greenland. A preliminary account was published by Simon Conway Morris and others in 1987 and expeditions led by J. S. Peel and Conway Morris have returned to the site several times between 1989 and the present. A field collection of perhaps 10,000 fossil specimens has been amassed. It is a part of the Buen Formation. Age The fauna is inevitably compared to that of the Burgess Shale, although it is probably ten to fifteen million years older – vs. ) – and more closely contemporaneous with the fauna of the Maotianshan shales from Chengjiang, which are dated to . Preservation The preservation of the Sirius Passet is traditionall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fossils Of Australia
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, Seashell, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in #Resin, amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the ''fossil record''. Paleontology is the study of fossils: their age, method of formation, and evolutionary significance. Specimens are usually considered to be fossils if they are over 10,000 years old. The oldest fossils are around 3.48 billion years old to 4.1 billion years old. Early edition, published online before print. The observation in the 19th century that certain fossils were associated with certain rock stratum, strata led to the recognition of a geological timescale and the relative ages of different fossils. The development of radiometric dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed scientists to quantitativ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paleozoic Animals Of Australia
The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ''zōḗ'' (), "life", meaning "ancient life" ). It is the longest of the Phanerozoic eras, lasting from , and is subdivided into six geologic periods (from oldest to youngest): # Cambrian # Ordovician # Silurian # Devonian # Carboniferous # Permian The Paleozoic comes after the Neoproterozoic Era of the Proterozoic Eon and is followed by the Mesozoic Era. The Paleozoic was a time of dramatic geological, climatic, and evolutionary change. The Cambrian witnessed the most rapid and widespread diversification of life in Earth's history, known as the Cambrian explosion, in which most modern phyla first appeared. Arthropods, molluscs, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and synapsids all evolved during the Paleozoic. Life began in the ocean but event ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nekton
Nekton or necton (from the ) refers to the actively swimming aquatic organisms in a body of water. The term was proposed by German biologist Ernst Haeckel to differentiate between the active swimmers in a body of water, and the passive organisms that were carried along by the current, the plankton. As a guideline, nektonic organisms have a high Reynolds number (greater than 1000) and planktonic organisms a low one (less than 10). However, some organisms can begin life as plankton and transition to nekton later on in life, sometimes making distinction difficult when attempting to classify certain plankton-to-nekton species as one or the other. For this reason, some biologists choose not to use this term. History The term was first proposed and used by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel in 1891 in his article ''Plankton-Studien'' where he contrasted it with plankton, the aggregate of passively floating, drifting, or somewhat motile organisms present in a body of water, primarily t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vetulicolidae
Vetulicolidae is an extinct family of Early Cambrian deuterostomes comprising two genera: ''Vetulicola'' and ''Ooedigera ''Ooedigera peeli'' is an extinct vetulicolian from the Early Cambrian of North Greenland. The front body was flattened horizontally, oval-shaped, likely bearing a reticulated or anastomosing pattern, and had 5 evenly-spaced gill pouches along t ...''. References Vetulicolia {{Paleo-deuterostome-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tunicate
A tunicate is a marine invertebrate animal, a member of the subphylum Tunicata (). It is part of the Chordata, a phylum which includes all animals with dorsal nerve cords and notochords (including vertebrates). The subphylum was at one time called Urochordata, and the term urochordates is still sometimes used for these animals. They are the only chordates that have lost their myomeric segmentation, with the possible exception of the 'seriation of the gill slits'. Some tunicates live as solitary individuals, but others replicate by budding and become colonies, each unit being known as a zooid. They are marine filter feeders with a water-filled, sac-like body structure and two tubular openings, known as siphons, through which they draw in and expel water. During their respiration and feeding, they take in water through the incurrent (or inhalant) siphon and expel the filtered water through the excurrent (or exhalant) siphon. Most adult tunicates are sessile, immobile and perman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Notochord
In anatomy, the notochord is a flexible rod which is similar in structure to the stiffer cartilage. If a species has a notochord at any stage of its life cycle (along with 4 other features), it is, by definition, a chordate. The notochord consists of inner, vacuolated cells covered by fibrous and elastic sheaths, lies along the anteroposterior axis (''front to back''), is usually closer to the dorsal than the ventral surface of the embryo, and is composed of cells derived from the mesoderm. The most commonly cited functions of the notochord are: as a midline tissue that provides directional signals to surrounding tissue during development, as a skeletal (structural) element, and as a vertebral precursor. In lancelets the notochord persists throughout life as the main structural support of the body. In tunicates the notochord is present only in the larval stage, being completely absent in the adult animal. In these invertebrate chordates, the notochord is not vacuolated. In all ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nesonektris Aldridgei 1
''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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wheeler Shale
The Wheeler Shale (named by Charles Walcott) is a Cambrian ( 507 Ma) fossil locality world-famous for prolific agnostid and ''Elrathia kingii'' trilobite remains (even though many areas are barren of fossils) and represents a Konzentrat-Lagerstätte. Varied soft bodied organisms are locally preserved, a fauna (including ''Naraoia'', ''Wiwaxia'' and ''Hallucigenia'') and preservation style (carbonaceous film) normally associated with the more famous Burgess Shale. As such, the Wheeler Shale also represents a Konservat-Lagerstätten. Together with the Marjum Formation and lower Weeks Formation, the Wheeler Shale forms of limestone and shale exposed in one of the thickest, most fossiliferous and best exposed sequences of Middle Cambrian rocks in North America. At the type locality of Wheeler Amphitheater, House Range, Millard County, western Utah, the Wheeler Shale consists of a heterogeneous succession of highly calcareous shale, shaley limestone, mudstone and thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skeemella
''Skeemella clavula'' is an elongate animal from what is now the Middle Cambrian Wheeler Shale lagerstätte, of Utah. It has been classified with the vetulicolians 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 .... The genus shows typical vetulicolian features, such as a body divided into two distinct parts: a wider torpedo-shaped front end and a segmented rear section interpreted as the muscular driver for an active swimming lifestyle. Vetulicolians were originally described as relatives of arthropods, but their classification is debated; the discovery of new genera with a row of front-section openings interpreted as gill slits has shifted their interpretation to stem deuterostomes related to tunicates, or perhaps even crown-group chordates. Newer reconstructions of vetulicolians ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burgess Shale
The Burgess Shale is a fossil-bearing deposit exposed in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils. At old (middle Cambrian), it is one of the earliest fossil beds containing soft-part imprints. The rock unit is a black shale and crops out at a number of localities near the town of Field in Yoho National Park Yoho National Park ( ) is a National Parks of Canada, national park of Canada. It is located within the Canadian Rockies, Rocky Mountains along the western slope of the Continental Divide of the Americas in southeastern British Columbia, bordered ... and the Kicking Horse Pass. Another outcrop is in Kootenay National Park 42 km to the south. History and significance The Burgess Shale was discovered by palaeontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott, Charles Walcott on 30 August 1909, towards the end of the season's fieldwork. He returned in 1910 with his sons, daughter, and wif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
