Biostratinomy of the enigmatic tubular organism Aulozoon soliorum, the Rawnsley Quartzite, South Australia

Surprenant, Rachel L.; Gehlîng, James G.; Hughes, Emmy B.; Droser, Mary L.

doi:10.1016/j.gr.2023.06.010

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 52 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Comparatively little is known about the non-biomineral members of the tubular morphogroup which first appear in the White Sea assemblage and persist into the Nama assemblage. Despite reports of abundant non-biomineral tubes from the Nama assemblage [ 2 ] and the White Sea assemblage [ 5 , 10 , 15 , 20 – 27 ], in some cases occurring in such high abundance that they shaped ecosystems by limiting available ecospace [ 28 – 30 ], there is no comprehensive understanding of the number of genera that comprise the non-biomineral subset of the tubular morphogroup, their morphological characteristics or temporal variability. As a result, the radiation of tubes in the Nama assemblage remains uncontextualized by the diversity of the tubular taxa that preceded them, obfuscating the scale and nature of tubular diversification in the terminal Ediacaran.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New insight into the global record of the Ediacaran tubular morphotype: a common solution to early multicellularity

Surprenant,

Droser

2024

R. Soc. Open Sci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The tubular morphogroup is a common component of Earth’s first complex, multicellular communities—the Ediacaran biota—and offers valuable insight into biological traits that are fundamental to animal life because they have intriguing links to metazoan phyla and are highly abundant in Ediacaran ecosystems. Biomineral tubes (e.g. Cloudina ) are well described from the Nama assemblage (~550–538 Myr), yielding a relatively detailed understanding of this subset of the morphogroup. Conversely, the non-biomineral tubular taxa of the Nama assemblage, as well as of the older White Sea assemblage (~560–550 Myr), are poorly understood. As a result, the variability of characters that define non-biomineral tubular organisms is unknown and their diversity dynamics throughout the terminal Ediacaran are unconstrained. To test hypotheses related to the diversity, morphological variability and temporal distribution of non-biomineral tubes, a comprehensive database of non-biomineral Ediacaran tubular taxa was compiled. Results demonstrate previously unrecognized morphological disparity in the non-biomineral tubular morphogroup and reveal that it comprises a higher number of genera than all other non-tubular morphogroups in the White Sea and the Nama. Thus, it illustrates that a tubular form dominated Ediacaran ecosystems for considerably longer than previously appreciated and, importantly, was the most common solution to early multicellularity.

show abstract