Fossil Echinoderm Studies in China and other countries: Historical and new perspectives

Abstract

This special volume of Palaeoworld showcases current studies of stemmed echinoderms from China and other countries. Despite the large number of paleontologists in China, few Chinese scientists specialize in the study of stemmed echinoderms. Museum collections of Chinese echinoderms are rare. Historically reports of Chinese echinoderms have been relatively rare and surely underestimate actual biodiversity. We hope this collection of fifteen papers will serve as a catalyst for the discovery and analysis of additional faunas of stemmed echinoderms from China and adjacent areas in Asia.China is a mosaic of numerous continental blocks as well as smaller continental fragments and accretionary complexes that have coalesced since the mid-Paleozoic. China contains the geologic history of the convergence between terranes having origins to the north of Paleo-Tethys with those terranes that rifted away from Gondwana during the middle Paleozoic.Echinoderm fossils from this diverse collage generally occur in areas of platform and shelf sedimentation on the margins of larger continental blocks such as North China, South China, and Sibumasu. However, echinoderms also have been collected from sedimentary accretionary wedge facies on active plate margins. Because Chinese terranes were situated on both the northern and southern margins of Paleo-Tethys, they have complex temporal, spatial, and climatic relationships. Many echinoderms tend to be highly endemic, thus their geographic distribution within faunas can play extremely important roles in delineating paleogeographic positions of these terranes through time.Although individual taxa were figured earlier (Lin and Fürsich, 2015;Stiller and Lin, 2015), Tien (1926) published one of the earliest reviews of echinoderms known from Asia. Tien (1926) and Tien and Mu (1955) also listed known echinoderm occurrences from China and compared these echinoderms with other known faunas. Later papers on Chinese echinoderm occurrences are listed in