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The Phylum Vendobionta: a sister group of the Eumetazoa?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Leo W. Buss  and
Adolf Seilacher
Leo W. Buss
Affiliation:
Departments of Biology and Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06511
Adolf Seilacher
Affiliation:
Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, and Geologisches Institut der Universität Tübingen, Sigwartstrasse 10, 7400 Tübingen, Germany
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Abstract

We offer an alternative interpretation of the Kingdom Vendobionta as a monophyletic sister group to the Eumetazoa. We hypothesize that the Vendobionta are cnidarian-like organisms that lacked cnidae. Cnidarians are held to have arisen by acquisition of cnidae by symbiosis with a microsporidian. Our analysis differs from existing interpretations of the Ediacaran fossils as ancestors of extant cnidarians in that we do not regard any of these forms as either polypoid or medusoid. This interpretation requires the erection of a new metazoan phylum, the Vendobionta.

Type
Research Article
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , Winter 1994 , pp. 1 - 4
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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