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- Bengtson, Stefan, 1947-, et al.
(författare)
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Chancelloriids of the Cambrian Burgess Shale
- 2015
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Ingår i: Palaeontologia Electronica. - 1935-3952 .- 1094-8074. ; 18:1, s. 1-67
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The cactus-like chancelloriids from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale are revised on the basis of Walcott’s (1920) original collections and new material containing several hundred specimens collected by Royal Ontario Museum field expeditions from 1975 to 2000. Walcott’s interpretation of chancelloriids as sponges was based on a misinterpretation of the dermal coelosclerites as embedded sponge-type spicules, an interpretation that further led to the lumping of three distinct taxa into one species, Chancelloria eros Walcott, 1920. The other two taxa are herein separated from C. eros and described as Allonnia tintinopsis n.sp. and Archiasterella coriacea n.sp., all belonging to the Family Chancelloriidae Walcott, 1920. Chancelloriids were sedentary animals, anchored to shells or lumps of debris in the muddy bottom, or to sponges, or to other chancelloriids. They had a radially symmetrical body and an apical orifice surrounded by a palisade of modified sclerites. Well-preserved integuments in Al. tintinopsis and Ar. coriacea do not show any ostium-like openings. Neither is there any evidence for internal organs, such as a gut. Partly narrowed specimens suggest that the body periodically contracted from the attached end to expel waste material from the body cavity. Chancelloriids were close in organization to cnidarians but shared the character of coelosclerites with the bilaterian halkieriids and siphogonuchitids. The taxon Coeloscleritophora is most likely paraphyletic.
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