This paper presents a phylogenetic analysis of the ‘‘Fallotaspidoidea,’’ a determination of the biogeographic origins of the eutrilobites, and an evaluation of the timing of the Cambrian radiation based on biogeographic evidence. Phylogenetic analysis incorporated 29 exoskeletal characters and 16 ingroup taxa. In the single most parsimonious tree the genus Fallotaspidella Repina, 1961, is the s...

ONE of John Shergold’s abiding research interests, and an area in which he made fundamental contributions to the fields of palaeontology and geology, was the study of Cambrian arthropods in general, and trilobites in particular (e.g., Shergold 1977, 1988, 1991; Shergold et al. 1990; Shergold & Laurie 1997). Here we focus on what Cambrian arthropods, including trilobites, can tell us about the n...

Clearly, the fossil record from the Cambrian period is an invaluable tool for deciphering animal evolution. Less clear, however, is how to integrate the paleontological information with molecular phylogeny and developmental biology data. Equally challenging is answering why the Cambrian period provided such a rich interval for the redeployment of genes that led to more complex body plans.

A rich body of empirically grounded theory has developed about food webs--the networks of feeding relationships among species within habitats. However, detailed food-web data and analyses are lacking for ancient ecosystems, largely because of the low resolution of taxa coupled with uncertain and incomplete information about feeding interactions. These impediments appear insurmountable for most ...

Cambrian sedimentary facies are exposed throughout north part of Kerman region. Trilobites’ faunas are the most common invertebrate fossils within the Cambrian strata. The section is made of 217 m of sandstone, shale, limestone and dolomite. In this study, 153 trilobite samples including seven species and genera were identified from the Dahu section 12 Km. east of Zarand. This trilobite’s assem...

For an arbitrary finite Coxeter group W , we define the family of Cambrian lattices for W as quotients of the weak order on W with respect to certain lattice congruences. We associate to each Cambrian lattice a complete fan, which we conjecture is the normal fan of a polytope combinatorially isomorphic to the generalized associahedron for W . In types A and B, we obtain, by means of a fiber-pol...

as Mollusca (Coleoidea) and precursors of Cambrian Nectocaridids and extant cuttlefish and squid. Abstract A functional interpretation of the problematic Ediacaran fossils Podolimurus and similar organisms such as Dickinsonia indicates that they are hitherto unrecognized members of Mollusca: Coleoidea and precursors of Cambrian Nectocaridids and of extant cuttlefish and squid. This interpretati...

The fossil record of the Cambrian Period has been known as a problem for evolutionary thegfory since Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. Darwin was aware of the sudden appearance of complex animal forms in the Cambrian from his own collecting in northeastern Wales. Complex animal forms such as trilobites seemed to appear with geological suddenness with no apparent ancestors in older rocks below...

The controversy about a Cambrian "explosion" of morphological disparity (followed by decimation), cladogenesis and fossilization is of central importance for the history of life. This paper revisits the controversy (with emphasis in onychophorans, which include emblematic organisms such as Hallucigenia), presents new data about the Chengjiang (Cambrian of China) faunal community and compares it...

One of the most interesting challenges facing paleobiologists is explaining the Cambrian explosion, the dramatic appearance of most metazoan animal phyla in the Early Cambrian, and the subsequent stability of these body plans over the ensuing 530 million years. We propose that because phenotypic variation decreases through geologic time, because microRNAs (miRNAs) increase genic precision, by t...