Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 277, Issue 1679, Pages 175-181Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0618
Keywords
Early Cambrian; Brachiopoda; lingulids; Chengjiang Lagerstatte; soft-tissue preservation; epibiosis
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [40702005, 04062003, 40332016]
- State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics
- Northwest University
- National Basic Research Programme of China [2006CB806401]
- [07YYB01]
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The classic Chengjiang Lagerstatte (Lower Cambrian, Atdabanian stage: Yu'anshan Formation) Yunnan, southwestern China, has yielded, besides the exceptional and often controversial soft-bodied fossils, a fauna of primitive/early lingulid brachiopods. Diandongia pista (Rong 1974) is one of the commonest and most strongly mineralized of the phosphatic brachiopods from the Lagerstatte. The shells of this species have been found to commonly serve as a basibiont host. Epibionts comprise the coeval brachiopod Longtancunella chengjiangensis and the cone-shaped cnidarian-related Archotuba conoidalis, as well as rounded smaller-sized epizoans (lesser than 2 mm). A principle morphological analysis demonstrates that the ovoid and rounded organisms that often occur along the commissure of D. pista resemble small juvenile or immature brachiopods. Epibiont-bearing shells of D. pista with soft-tissue preservation demonstrate that the host brachiopods were overgrown while alive, and provide an argument for D. pista having a semiinfaunal life style with only the slim pedicle embedded in sediment. The epibiotic association sheds direct light on the ecology of Cambrian brachiopods in soft-substrate marine environments. The Chengjiang fossils demonstrate that the Early Cambrian brachiopods, as compared with recent lingulids, occupied different and a wider spectrum of ecological niches and tiers of space.
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