Huainan biota

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Location of Huainan City, Anhui Province, China Location of Huainan Prefecture within Anhui (China).png
Location of Huainan City, Anhui Province, China

The Huainan biota is a collection of macroscopic skeletal organisms discovered in the early 1980s by Wang and Sun Weiguo in the Precambrian deposits of China (Huainan City, Anhui Province) with an age of 840-740 Ma (Tonian) [1] . A similar biota was also found by M. B. Gnilovskaya in Russia, on the Timan Ridge; its age is about 1 billion years. [2]

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So far, it has been poorly studied. It is only known that its constituent organisms ( Protoarenicola , Pararenicola , Sinosabellidites ) reached several centimeters in size (which is significantly inferior to the Ediacaran ones) and, apparently, had the shape of segmented tubes, often goblet-shaped, with extensions at the end. Assumptions have been made about both the animal (worm-like) and algal nature of these organisms.

Huainan biota do not contain jellyfish-like "discs" (as does the Ediacaran biota), nor any forms close to sponges which are generally, although not universally, considered the most primitive of modern animal groups. [3] Apparently, the Huainan biota cannot be considered ancestral either to the Ediacaran, or even more so to the modern (Phanerozoic) biota.

See also

References

  1. Li, Guangjin; Chen, Lei; Pang, Ke; Tang, Qing; Wu, Chengxi; Yuan, Xunlai; Zhou, Chuanming; Xiao, Shuhai (2023-04-12). "Tonian carbonaceous compressions indicate that Horodyskia is one of the oldest multicellular and coenocytic macro-organisms". Communications Biology. 6 (1): 399. doi:10.1038/s42003-023-04740-2. ISSN   2399-3642. PMC   10097871 . PMID   37046079.
  2. Fedonkin, Mikhail A. (2003). "The origin of the Metazoa in the light of the Proterozoic fossil record". Paleontological Research. 7 (1): 9–41. Bibcode:2003PalRe...7....9F. doi:10.2517/prpsj.7.9.
  3. "Sponges and comb jellies". News and features. www.bristol.ac.uk (Press release). University of Bristol. November 2015. Retrieved 2023-03-11.

Further literature