{"id":235,"date":"2008-10-17T11:39:51","date_gmt":"2008-10-16T22:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2008\/10\/life_in_the_cambrian\/"},"modified":"2008-10-17T11:39:51","modified_gmt":"2008-10-16T22:39:51","slug":"life-in-the-cambrian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2008\/10\/life-in-the-cambrian\/","title":{"rendered":"life in the cambrian"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first read Stephen Jay Gould’s book, Wonderful Life<\/i>, not long after it was first published in 1989. The book centres on the Burgess Shale, a wonderfully rich source of of different fossils (a Lagerstätte<\/a>) from the Cambrian, around 530 million years ago. The Burgess Shale is unusual in that it contains an array of soft-bodied organisms, as well as those with shells and exoskeletons – & they are exquisitely preserved in 3-D detail. The book gives a sense of the excitement that scientists felt as they extracted these fossils from their rocky matrix and realised what they were dealing with.<\/p>\n

Many of the Burgess Shale fossils are from arthropods – animals with a an exoskeleton & jointed legs. One of these is called Waptia<\/i> – it looks vaguely like a shrimp. Now I see from PZ Myers, over on Pharyngula<\/a>, that researchers studying the Chengjiang Lagerstätte, in China, have found some most unusual fossils of a Waptia<\/i>-like creature – they’re joined together, head to tail, like beads on a strange necklace. The paper’s authors suggest that this may represent feeding behaviour, but this sounds a bit odd. As PZ says, the animals are joined nose-to-tail, so the last one in the chain is going to be getting a very unsavoury meal indeed!<\/p>\n

\"waptia.jpg\"
(Click for larger image)<\/a>
Waptia<\/i>-like arthropod, Lower Cambrian, Haikou, Yunnan. (A<\/b>) Individual with twisted abdomen, part of chain, Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeontology, YKLP 11020a. (B<\/b>) Chain, about 20 individuals, various dorsoventral-lateral orientations, composite image (joined at cpt\/p arrow), YKLP 11020a and YKLP 11020b. (C<\/b>) Individual linked to carapace behind, lateral view, part of chain of nine individuals, YKLP 11021. (D<\/b>) Isolated individual, subventral view, YKLP 11019. (E<\/b> to G<\/b>) Reconstruction shown in dorsal, ventral, and right lateral views, respectively. Scale bars in (A), (C), and (D) indicate 1 mm; in (B) and (E) to (G), 5 mm. b, s, and t indicate bent, stretched, and telescoped individuals, respectively; cpt, counterpart; f, facing direction; p, part; and tw, twisted. (from Pharyngula<\/a><\/em> – original image is in Hou X-G, Siveter DJ, Aldridge RJ, Siveter DJ (2008) Collective Behavior in an Early Cambrian Arthropod. Science<\/u> 322<\/b>(5899):224.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first read Stephen Jay Gould’s book, Wonderful Life, not long after it was first published in 1989. The book centres on the Burgess Shale, a wonderfully rich source of of different fossils (a Lagerstätte) from the Cambrian, around 530 million years ago. The Burgess Shale is unusual in that it contains an array of soft-bodied […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13],"tags":[25,12,14],"yoast_head":"\nlife in the cambrian : BioBlog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2008\/10\/life-in-the-cambrian\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"life in the cambrian : BioBlog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I first read Stephen Jay Gould’s book, Wonderful Life, not long after it was first published in 1989. 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