Thursday, April 21, 2011

A Preserved Graptolite Zooid?

It appears that scientists have finally discovered a preserved graptolite zooid! It's benthic and it's Cambrian, and its BIG (4 cm!) but the thing looks just like Rhabdopleura, just like we would expect based on phylogenetic analyses of colony structure...

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982211002776

Hou, X.-g., Richard J. Aldridge, David J. Siveter, Derek J. Siveter, M. Williams, J. Zalasiewicz, and X.-y. Ma. 2011. An Early Cambrian Hemichordate Zooid. Current Biology 21(7):612-616.

I don't quite see the fusellar banding that Hou et al. describe in the figures, but if anyone else can, let me know.

http://www2.le.ac.uk/news/blog/2011-archive/march/fossil-discovered/

An exciting time to be a graptolite worker!