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加拿大伯吉斯頁岩再發現新種節肢動物化石 (英文)

圖片附件: reconstruction of Habelia optata.jpg (2017-12-23 06:56 PM, 62.12 K)

Artistic reconstruction of Habelia optata. Habelia is thought to have been an active predator, eating small animals with hard carapaces -- such as trilobites. Credit: Joanna Liang. Copyright: Royal Ontario Museum

圖片附件: Fossil specimen of Habelia optata .jpg (2017-12-23 06:55 PM, 143.28 K)

Fossil specimen of Habelia optata from the Royal Ontario Museum. This specimen spectacularly shows some of the very large jaws under the head shield. Note also the long dorsal spines on the thorax. Credit: Jean-Bernard Caron. Copyright: Royal Ontario Museum

Paleontologists at the University of Toronto (U of T) and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto have entirely revisited a tiny yet exceptionally fierce ancient sea creature called Habelia optata that has confounded scientists since it was first discovered more than a century ago.

The research by lead author Cédric Aria, recent graduate of the PhD program in the department of ecology & evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science at U of T, and co-author Jean-Bernard Caron, senior curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the ROM and an associate professor in the departments of ecology & evolutionary biology and Earth sciences at U of T, is published today in BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Approximately 2 cm in length with a tail as long as the rest of its body, the long-extinct Habelia optata belongs to the group of invertebrate animals called arthropods, which also includes such familiar creatures as spiders, insects, lobsters and crabs. It lived during the middle Cambrian period approximately 508 million years ago and comes from the renowned Burgess Shale fossil deposit in British Columbia. Habelia optata was part of the "Cambrian explosion," a period of rapid evolutionary change when most major animal groups first emerged in the fossil record.

Like all arthropods, Habelia optata features a segmented body with external skeleton and jointed limbs. What remained unclear for decades, however, was the main sub-group of arthropods to which Habelia belonged. Early studies had mentioned mandibulates—a hyperdiverse lineage whose members possess antennae and a pair of specialized appendages known as mandibles, usually used to grasp, squeeze and crush their food. But Habelia was later left as one of the typically unresolved arthropods of the Burgess Shale.

Research article:
https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentra ... 6/s12862-017-1088-7

[ 本帖最後由寒武紀於 2017-12-23 06:59 PM 編輯 ]

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