Auroralumina

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Auroralumina
Temporal range: Late Ediacaran, 562 – 557  Ma
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Auroralumina attenboroughii reconstruction.jpg
Reconstruction of Auroralumina attenboroughii
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Cnidaria
Subphylum: Medusozoa
Genus: Auroralumina
Dunn et al., 2022
Species:
A. attenboroughii
Binomial name
Auroralumina attenboroughii
Dunn et al., 2022

Auroralumina is a genus of cnidarians from the Ediacaran of Charnwood Forest; the only species is Auroralumina attenboroughii. [1] It is the earliest known animal predator. Auroralumina is the oldest crown-group cnidarian. [1]

Contents

Fossil

Biology

Holotype (top left), on a slab of Ediacaran rock containing Charnia (lower right) and Bradgatia (left) Auroralumina attenboroughii holotype.jpg
Holotype (top left), on a slab of Ediacaran rock containing Charnia (lower right) and Bradgatia (left)

The fossil, whose name recalls the Latin for "dawn lantern", has been described as the earliest known animal predator: since its structure places it among the cnidaria, which have stinging cells (cnidocytes) on their tentacles, it is presumed that they used these to catch small planktonic animals. The fossil consists of a pair of bifurcating (forking) tubes in which the animals lived, the earliest such structure to be recorded. It has been dated to 560 million years ago using zircon crystals in the rock. The only species in the genus, A. attenboroughii, is named for the English natural history presenter David Attenborough, who went to school in Leicestershire, where the fossil was found. [1] [2]

Phylogeny

Phylogenetic analyses recover Auroralumina as a stem-group medusozoan. [1]

Animalia

Ctenophora Comb jelly.jpg

Cnidaria

Anthozoa Actinostola 3.jpg

Auroralumina Auroralumina attenboroughii reconstruction.jpg

other stem-group Medusozoa (e.g. Conulariida) Estonian Museum of Natural History - Conularia.png

crown-group Medusozoa Moon jellyfish at Gota Sagher (cropped).JPG

Bilateria Ikaria wariootia (detail).jpg

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cnidaria</span> Aquatic animal phylum having cnydocytes

Cnidaria is a phylum under kingdom Animalia containing over 11,000 species of aquatic animals found both in fresh water and marine environments, including jellyfish, hydroids, sea anemones, corals and some of the smallest marine parasites. Their distinguishing features are a decentralized nervous system distributed throughout a gelatinous body and the presence of cnidocytes or cnidoblasts, specialized cells with ejectable flagella used mainly for envenomation and capturing prey. Their bodies consist of mesoglea, a non-living, jelly-like substance, sandwiched between two layers of epithelium that are mostly one cell thick. Cnidarians are also some of the only animals that can reproduce both sexually and asexually.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ediacaran</span> Third and last period of the Neoproterozoic Era

The Ediacaran is a geological period of the Neoproterozoic era that spans 96 million years from the end of the Cryogenian period at 635 Mya to the beginning of the Cambrian period at 538.8 Mya. It is the last period of the Proterozoic eon as well as the last of the so-called "Precambrian supereon", before the beginning of the subsequent Cambrian period marks the start of the Phanerozoic eon, where recognizable fossil evidence of life becomes common.

The cloudinids, an early metazoan family containing the genera Acuticocloudina, Cloudina and Conotubus, lived in the late Ediacaran period about 550 million years ago. and became extinct at the base of the Cambrian. They formed millimetre-scale conical fossils consisting of calcareous cones nested within one another; the appearance of the organism itself remains unknown. The name Cloudina honors the 20th-century geologist and paleontologist Preston Cloud.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Predation</span> Biological interaction

Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation and parasitoidism. It is distinct from scavenging on dead prey, though many predators also scavenge; it overlaps with herbivory, as seed predators and destructive frugivores are predators.

<i>Charnia</i> Genus of frond-like lifeforms

Charnia is an extinct genus of frond-like lifeforms belonging to the Ediacaran biota with segmented, leaf-like ridges branching alternately to the right and left from a zig-zag medial suture. The genus Charnia was named for Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire, England, where the first fossilised specimen was found. Charnia is significant because it was the first Precambrian fossil to be recognized as such.

<i>Kimberella</i> Primitive Mollusc-like organism

Kimberella is an extinct genus of bilaterian known only from rocks of the Ediacaran period. The slug-like organism fed by scratching the microbial surface on which it dwelt in a manner similar to the gastropods, although its affinity with this group is contentious.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sea pen</span> Order of colonial marine cnidarians

Sea pens are colonial marine cnidarians belonging to the order Pennatulacea. The order Pennatulacea, commonly known as sea pens, are colony-forming benthos belonging within subclass Octocorallia. Sea pens are found worldwide from shallow to deep waters, and they are important components in sandy and muddy environments. Thus far, there has been only one molecular study focusing on the phylogenetic relationships within the order Pennatulacea, which mainly treated deep-sea species, and thus information on shallow water species is still lacking. There are 14 families within the order and 35 extant genera; it is estimated that of 450 described species, around 200 are valid. Sea pens have a cosmopolitan distribution, being found in tropical and temperate waters worldwide, as well as from the intertidal to depths of more than 6100 m. Sea pens are grouped with the octocorals, together with sea whips (gorgonians).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Medusozoa</span> Clade of marine invertebrates

Medusozoa is a clade in the phylum Cnidaria, and is often considered a subphylum. It includes the classes Hydrozoa, Scyphozoa, Staurozoa and Cubozoa, and possibly the parasitic Polypodiozoa. Medusozoans are distinguished by having a medusa stage in their often complex life cycle, a medusa typically being an umbrella-shaped body with stinging tentacles around the edge. With the exception of some Hydrozoa, all are called jellyfish in their free-swimming medusa phase.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vendobionta</span> Group of extinct creatures that were part of the Ediacaran biota

Vendobionts or Vendozoans (Vendobionta) are a proposed very high-level, extinct clade of benthic organisms that made up of the majority of the organisms that were part of the Ediacaran biota. It is a hypothetical group and at the same time, it would be the oldest of the animals that populated the Earth about 580 million years ago, in the Ediacaran period. They became extinct shortly after the so-called Cambrian explosion, with the introduction of fauna formed by more recognizable groups and more related to modern animals. It is very likely that the whole Ediacaran biota is not a monophyletic clade and not every genus placed in its subtaxa is an animal.

<i>Charniodiscus</i> Genus of extinct Ediacaran lifeform

Charniodiscus is an Ediacaran fossil that in life was probably a stationary filter feeder that lived anchored to a sandy sea bed. The organism had a holdfast, stalk and frond. The holdfast was bulbous shaped, and the stalk was flexible. The frond was segmented and had a pointed tip. There were two growth forms: one with a short stem and a wide frond, and another with a long stalk, elevating a smaller frond about 50 centimetres (20 in) above the holdfast. While the organism superficially resembles the sea pens (cnidaria), it is probably not a crown-group animal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ediacaran biota</span> Life of the Ediacaran period

The Ediacaranbiota is a taxonomic period classification that consists of all life forms that were present on Earth during the Ediacaran Period. These were enigmatic tubular and frond-shaped, mostly sessile, organisms. Trace fossils of these organisms have been found worldwide, and represent the earliest known complex multicellular organisms. The term "Ediacara biota" has received criticism from some scientists due to its alleged inconsistency, arbitrary exclusion of certain fossils, and inability to be precisely defined.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal</span> Kingdom of living things

Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. Animals form a clade, meaning that they arose from a single common ancestor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conulariida</span> Order of cnidarians (fossil)

Conulariida are an extinct group of medusozoan cnidarians known from fossils spanning from the latest Ediacaran up until the Late Triassic. They are almost exclusively known from their hard external structures, which were pyramidal in shape and made up of numerous lamellae.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marine invertebrates</span> Marine animals without a vertebral column

Marine invertebrates are the invertebrates that live in marine habitats. Invertebrate is a blanket term that includes all animals apart from the vertebrate members of the chordate phylum. Invertebrates lack a vertebral column, and some have evolved a shell or a hard exoskeleton. As on land and in the air, marine invertebrates have a large variety of body plans, and have been categorised into over 30 phyla. They make up most of the macroscopic life in the oceans.

<i>Ernietta</i> Extinct genus of invertebrates

Ernietta is an extinct genus of Ediacaran organisms with an infaunal lifestyle. Fossil preservations and modeling indicate this organism was sessile and “sack”-shaped. It survived partly buried in substrate, with an upturned bell-shaped frill exposed above the sediment-water interface. Ernietta have been recovered from present-day Namibia, and are a part of the Ediacaran biota, a late Proterozoic radiation of multicellular organisms. They are among the earliest complex multicellular organisms and are known from the late Ediacaran. Ernietta plateauensis remains the sole species of the genus.

The small shelly fauna, small shelly fossils (SSF), or early skeletal fossils (ESF) are mineralized fossils, many only a few millimetres long, with a nearly continuous record from the latest stages of the Ediacaran to the end of the Early Cambrian Period. They are very diverse, and there is no formal definition of "small shelly fauna" or "small shelly fossils". Almost all are from earlier rocks than more familiar fossils such as trilobites. Since most SSFs were preserved by being covered quickly with phosphate and this method of preservation is mainly limited to the late Ediacaran and early Cambrian periods, the animals that made them may actually have arisen earlier and persisted after this time span.

The Cambrian explosion is an interval of time approximately 538.8 million years ago in the Cambrian period of the early Paleozoic when a sudden radiation of complex life occurred, and practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record. It lasted for about 13 to 25 million years and resulted in the divergence of most modern metazoan phyla. The event was accompanied by major diversification in other groups of organisms as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avalon explosion</span> Proposed evolutionary event in the history of metazoa, producing the Ediacaran biota

The Avalon explosion, named from the Precambrian faunal trace fossils discovered on the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, eastern Canada, is a proposed evolutionary radiation of prehistoric animals about 575 million years ago in the Ediacaran period, with the Avalon explosion being one of three eras grouped in this time period. This evolutionary event is believed to have occurred some 33 million years earlier than the Cambrian explosion, which had been long thought to be when complex life started on Earth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Precambrian body plans</span> Structure and development of early multicellular organisms

Until the late 1950s, the Precambrian was not believed to have hosted multicellular organisms. However, with radiometric dating techniques, it has been found that fossils initially found in the Ediacara Hills in Southern Australia date back to the late Precambrian. These fossils are body impressions of organisms shaped like disks, fronds and some with ribbon patterns that were most likely tentacles.

Hylaecullulus fordi, also described as dumbbells, is an extinct species of Ediacaran petalonamid whose fossils were found in the Charnwood Forest of Leicestershire, England. It serves as an important rangeomorph because of its multifoliate anatomy. Its overall body plan is similar to that of a goblet, from which its name, Hylaecullulus, is derived from.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Dunn, F. S.; Kenchington, C. G.; Parry, L. A.; Clark, J. W.; Kendall, R. S.; Wilby, P. R. (25 July 2022). "A crown-group cnidarian from the Ediacaran of Charnwood Forest, UK". Nature Ecology & Evolution. doi: 10.1038/s41559-022-01807-x . PMC   9349040 .
  2. Amos, Jonathan (25 July 2022). "Ancient fossil is earliest known animal predator". bbc.co.uk. BBC News . Retrieved 25 July 2022.