Research on early skeletal fossils of southern Shaanxi Province and easternYunnan Province shows that the interval from the latest Precambrian to the Early Cambrian was animportant period of significant changes in bio...Research on early skeletal fossils of southern Shaanxi Province and easternYunnan Province shows that the interval from the latest Precambrian to the Early Cambrian was animportant period of significant changes in biomineralization of various organisms. The latestPrecambrian skeletal fossils, represented by Cloudina, are characterized by cone-in-cone structures,relatively high content of organic matter, and various shell shapes with obvious plasticdeformation. In the Early Cambrian the skeletal organisms, consisting of phosphatic, carbonate andsiliceous minerals, began to appear in great abundance and to distribute widely. Moreover,microstructure of these skeletal organisms appeared to have been diversified, for example, maintypes of recent molluscan microstructures, such as prismatic, lamello-fibrillar and regular foliatedstructures, were already developed at that time; fibrous structures further diversified, such aslamello-fibrillas indicative of mollusks and fibre bundles of hyoliths; there were at least twolayers in a shell. This shows that biologically controlled biomineralization had played the mainrole in the Early Cambrian and it laid a key foundation for formation of the true shell of diverseinvertebrates, giving rise to the 'Cambrian explosion'.展开更多
基金the Chinese Major Basic Research Projects of Ministry of Science and Technology,China(Grant No.2000077700)the Innovation Fund of CAS(Grant No.CAS-KZCX2-116)+1 种基金State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy(Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology,CAS)(Grant No.013108) the National Natural Science Foundation of China,DST(Grant No.95-Special-01-4-1).
文摘Research on early skeletal fossils of southern Shaanxi Province and easternYunnan Province shows that the interval from the latest Precambrian to the Early Cambrian was animportant period of significant changes in biomineralization of various organisms. The latestPrecambrian skeletal fossils, represented by Cloudina, are characterized by cone-in-cone structures,relatively high content of organic matter, and various shell shapes with obvious plasticdeformation. In the Early Cambrian the skeletal organisms, consisting of phosphatic, carbonate andsiliceous minerals, began to appear in great abundance and to distribute widely. Moreover,microstructure of these skeletal organisms appeared to have been diversified, for example, maintypes of recent molluscan microstructures, such as prismatic, lamello-fibrillar and regular foliatedstructures, were already developed at that time; fibrous structures further diversified, such aslamello-fibrillas indicative of mollusks and fibre bundles of hyoliths; there were at least twolayers in a shell. This shows that biologically controlled biomineralization had played the mainrole in the Early Cambrian and it laid a key foundation for formation of the true shell of diverseinvertebrates, giving rise to the 'Cambrian explosion'.
