Document Type
Article
Publication Date
October 2007
Publication Title
PLoS ONE
Volume
2
Issue Number
10
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0001121
Abstract
Cnidarians represent an early diverging animal group and thus insight into their origin and diversification is key to understanding metazoan evolution. Further, cnidarian jellyfish comprise an important component of modern marine planktonic ecosystems. Here we report on exceptionally preserved cnidarian jellyfish fossils from the Middle Cambrian (~505 million years old) Marjum Formation of Utah. These are the first described Cambrian jellyfish fossils to display exquisite preservation of soft part anatomy including detailed features of structures interpreted as trailing tentacles and subumbrellar and exumbrellar surfaces. If the interpretation of these preserved characters is correct, their presence is diagnostic of modern jellyfish taxa. These new discoveries may provide insight into the scope of cnidarian diversity shortly after the Cambrian radiation, and would reinforce the notion that important taxonomic components of the modern planktonic realm were in place by the Cambrian period.
Recommended Citation
Paulyn Cartwright, Susan L. Halgedahl, Jonathan R. Hendricks, Richard D. Jarrard, Antonio C. Marques, Allen G. Collins, and Bruce S. Lieberman. "Exceptionally Preserved Jellyfishes from the Middle Cambrian" PLoS ONE (2007). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001121
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
This article originally appeared in PLoS ONE in Volume 2, Issue 10 and can be found online at this link. © 2007 Cartwright et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
SJSU users: use the following link to login and access the article via SJSU databases.