کد مقاله | کد نشریه | سال انتشار | مقاله انگلیسی | نسخه تمام متن |
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4749784 | 1642280 | 2011 | 22 صفحه PDF | دانلود رایگان |
The Lower Cambrian Maotianshan Shale near Kunming (Southern China) not only retains beautifully preserved and diverse organisms but also documents a missing evolutionary history between living vertebrates and their amphioxus-like ancestor. Presented here are the key novelties both for the evolutionary origins of the chordates and for the evolutionary transition from amphioxus-like ancestor toward the vertebrates. The adaptation for a burrowing life style is considered a key adaptive pressure for generating novel chordate-only anatomical characters including the first axial skeleton, e.g., notochord and myotomes. The transition from amphioxus-like ancestor toward the vertebrates was presumably triggered by the way toward more active life style, resulted in the origination of numerous novel structures including neural crests, a more complex head with upper and lower lips, an active gilled pharyngeal system, a large brain, image-forming paired eyes, and a bony axial skeleton (vertebrae). The diverse limb-bearing organisms from the Lower Cambrian Maotianshan Shale arthropods representing different evolutionary stages shed light on the mysterious field of the evolutionary origins of the arthropods and reveal a grand scenario of how the arthropods paved their way through step-wise evolution from worm-like ancestor toward living crown-lineage arthropods.
Journal: Palaeoworld - Volume 20, Issue 4, December 2011, Pages 257–278