Pollingeria

Pollingeria is a problematic genus of animals of the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. 3080 specimens of Pollingeria are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 5.85% of the community.[1]

Pollingeria
Temporal range:
Panels 7, 8 and 9 depict Pollingeria
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
incertae sedis
Genus:
Pollingeria

Description

Pollingeria are short worms, which are generally elongated and relatively thin, less than an inch long. Their shape varies widely from specimen to specimen.

In a single instance, individuals are grouped together.[2]

Affinity

The classification of Pollingeria is highly problematic: there is no obvious similarity to any organism, living or extinct. Charles Doolittle Walcott, who described the organism in 1911, suggested that it ranked among the annelid polychaete worms, considering the "chips" to represent chaetae.

More recently, Simon Conway Morris and Derek Briggs suggested that the fossils could each represent an entire organism.

References
  1. Caron, Jean-Bernard; Jackson, Donald A. (October 2006). "Taphonomy of the Greater Phyllopod Bed community, Burgess Shale". PALAIOS. 21 (5): 451–65. Bibcode:2006Palai..21..451C. doi:10.2110/palo.2003.P05-070R. JSTOR 20173022. S2CID 53646959.
  2. Conway Morris, S. (1979). "The Burgess Shale (Middle Cambrian) Fauna". Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. 10: 327–349. doi:10.1146/annurev.es.10.110179.001551.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.