Abstract
Odontogriphus omalus was originally described as a problematic non-biomineralized lophophorate organism. Here we re-interpret Odontogriphus based on 189 new specimens including numerous exceptionally well preserved individuals from the Burgess Shale collections of the Royal Ontario Museum. This additional material provides compelling evidence that the feeding apparatus in Odontogriphus is a radula of molluscan architecture comprising two primary bipartite tooth rows attached to a radular membrane and showing replacement by posterior addition. Further characters supporting molluscan affinity include a broad foot bordered by numerous ctenidia located in a mantle groove and a stiffened cuticular dorsum. Odontogriphus has a radula similar to Wiwaxia corrugata but lacks a scleritome. We interpret these animals to be members of an early stem-group mollusc lineage that probably originated in the Neoproterozoic Ediacaran Period, providing support for the retention of a biomat-based grazing community from the late Precambrian Period until at least the Middle Cambrian.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Budd, G. E. The Cambrian fossil record and the origin of the phyla. Integr. Comp. Biol. 43, 157–165 (2003)
Conway Morris, S. A new Cambrian lophophorate from the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. Palaeontology 19, 199–222 (1976)
Dzik, J. Yunnanozoon and the ancestry of chordates. Acta Palaeont. Pol. 40, 341–360 (1995)
Briggs, D. E. G. & Conway Morris, S. in Problematic Fossil Taxa (eds Hoffman, A. & Nitecki, M. H.) 167–183 (Oxford Univ. Press/Clarendon Press, New York, 1986)
Ritchie, A. & Edgecombe, G. D. An Odontogriphid from the Upper Permian of Australia. Palaeontology 44, 861–874 (2001)
Conway Morris, S. The Middle Cambrian metazoan Wiwaxia corrugata (Matthew) from the Burgess Shale and Ogygopsis Shale, British Columbia, Canada. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 307, 507–582 (1985)
Butterfield, N. J. A reassessment of the enigmatic Burgess Shale fossil Wiwaxia corrugata (Matthew) and its relationship to the polychaete Canadia spinosa Walcott. Paleobiology 16, 287–303 (1990)
Conway Morris, S. & Peel, J. S. Articulated halkieriids from the Lower Cambrian of North Greenland and their role in early protostome evolution. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 347, 305–358 (1995)
Eibye-Jacobsen, D. A reevaluation of Wiwaxia and the polychaetes of the Burgess Shale. Lethaia 37, 317–335 (2004)
Fedonkin, M. A. & Waggoner, B. M. The Late Precambrian fossil Kimberella is a mollusc-like bilaterian organism. Nature 388, 868–871 (1997)
Conway Morris, S. & Peel, J. S. Articulated halkieriids from the Lower Cambrian of north Greenland. Nature 345, 802–805 (1990)
Erwin, D. H. & Davidson, E. H. The last common bilaterian ancestor. Development 129, 3021–3032 (2002)
Caron, J. B. & Jackson, D. A. Taphonomy of the Greater Phyllopod Bed Community, Burgess Shale. Palaios 21 (5), (in the press)
Caron, J. B. Taphonomy and Community Analysis of the Middle Cambrian Greater Phyllopod Bed, Burgess Shale. Thesis, Univ. Toronto (2005)
Valentine, J. W. On the Origin of Phyla (Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago/London, 2004)
Balavoine, G. & Adoutte, A. The segmented Urbilateria: A testable scenario. Integr. Comp. Biol. 43, 137–147 (2003)
Peterson, K. J. et al. Estimating metazoan divergence times with a molecular clock. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 101, 6536–6541 (2004)
Douzery, E. J. P., Snell, E. A., Bapteste, E., Delsuc, F. & Philippe, H. The timing of eukaryotic evolution: Does a relaxed molecular clock reconcile proteins and fossils? Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 101, 15386–15391 (2004)
Seilacher, A. Biomat-related lifestyles in the Precambrian. Palaios 14, 86–93 (1999)
Scheltema, A. H., Kerth, K. & Kuzirian, A. M. Original molluscan radula: Comparisons among Aplacophora, Polyplacophora, Gastropoda, and the Cambrian fossil Wiwaxia corrugata. J. Morphol. 257, 219–244 (2003)
Runnegar, B. in Origin and Evolutionary Radiation of the Mollusca (ed. Taylor, J. D.) 77–87 (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1996)
Haas, W. Evolution of calcareous hardparts in primitive molluscs. Malacologia 21, 403–418 (1981)
Bengtson, S. The cap-shaped Cambrian fossil Maikhanella and the relationship between coeloscleritophorans and molluscs. Lethaia 25, 401–420 (1992)
Henry, J. Q., Okusu, A. & Martindale, M. Q. The cell lineage of the polyplacophoran, Chaetopleura apiculata: variation in the spiralian program and implications for molluscan evolution. Dev. Biol. 272, 145–160 (2004)
Runnegar, B., Pojeta, J. Jr, Taylor, M. E. & Collins, D. New species of the Cambrian and Ordovician chitons Matthevia and Chelodes from Wisconsin and Queensland; evidence for the early history of polyplacophoran mollusks. J. Paleontol. 53, 1374–1394 (1979)
Vendrasco, M. J., Wood, T. E. & Runnegar, B. N. Articulated Paleozoic fossil with 17 plates greatly expands disparity of early chitons. Nature 429, 288–291 (2004)
Vinther, J. & Nielsen, C. The Early Cambrian Halkieria is a mollusc. Zool. Scr. 34, 81–89 (2005)
Scheltema, A. H. Aplacophora as progenetic aculiferans and the coelomate origin of mollusks as the sister taxon of Sipuncula. Biol. Bull. 184, 57–78 (1993)
Scheltema, A. H. & Ivanov, D. L. An aplacophoran postlarva with iterated dorsal groups of spicules and skeletal similarities to Paleozoic fossils. Invertebr. Biol. 21, 1–10 (2002)
Scheltema, A. H., Tscherkassky, M. & Kuzirian, A. M. in Microscopic Anatomy of Invertebrates (eds Harrison, F. W. & Kohn, A. J.) 13–54 (Wiley-Liss, New York, 1994)
Fischer, F. P. Die Mantelpapillen und Stacheln von Acanthochiton fascicularis L. (Mollusca, Polyplacophora). Zoomorphologie 94, 121–131 (1980)
Budd, G. E. & Jensen, S. A critical reappraisal of the fossil record of the bilaterian phyla. Biol. Rev. 75, 253–295 (2000)
Seilacher, A., Buatois, L. A. & Mángano, L. G. Trace fossils in the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition: Behavioral diversification, ecological turnover and environmental shift. Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. 227, 323–356 (2005)
Seilacher, A. & Pflüger, F. in Biostabilization of Sediments (eds Krumbein, W. E., Peterson, D. M. & Stal, L. J.) 97–105 (Bibliotheks und Informationssystem der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany, 1994)
Bottjer, D. J., Hagadorn, J. W. & Dornbos, S. Q. The Cambrian substrate revolution. GSA Today 10, 1–7 (2000)
Dornbos, S., Bottjer, D. & Chen, J.-Y. Evidence for seafloor microbial mats and associated metazoan lifestyles in Lower Cambrian phosphorites of Southwest China. Lethaia 37, 127–137 (2004)
Satterthwait, D. F. Paleobiology and Paleoecology of Middle Cambrian Algae from Western North America. Thesis, Univ. California (1976)
Dornbos, S. Q., Bottjer, D. J. & Chen, J.-Y. Paleoecology of benthic metazoans in the Early Cambrian Maotianshan Shale biota and the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale biota: evidence for the Cambrian substrate revolution. Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. 220, 47–67 (2005)
Conway Morris, S. Ediacaran-like fossils in Cambrian Burgess Shale-type faunas of North America. Palaeontology 36, 593–635 (1993)
Hagadorn, J. W., Fedo, C. M. & Waggoner, B. M. Early Cambrian Ediacaran-type fossils from California. J. Paleontol. 74, 731–740 (2000)
Jensen, S., Gehling, J. G. & Droser, M. L. Ediacara-type fossils in Cambrian sediments. Nature 393, 567–569 (1998)
Narbonne, G. M. The Ediacara biota: Neoproterozoic origin of animals and their ecosystems. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 33, 421–442 (2005)
Bengtson, S. in The Fossil Record of Predation (eds Kowalewski, M. & Kelley, P. H.) 289–317 (The Paleontological Society, New Haven, 2002)
Orr, P. J., Kearns, S. L. & Briggs, D. E. G. Backscattered electron imaging of fossils exceptionally-preserved as organic compressions. Palaios 17, 110–117 (2002)
Allison, P. A. Phosphatized soft-bodied squids from the Jurassic Oxford Clay. Lethaia 21, 403–410 (1988)
Acknowledgements
We thank S. Bengtson, G. Budd, S. Conway Morris, S. Dornbos, W. Hagadorn, T. Høisaeter and B. Runnegar for reviewing different drafts of this paper. N. Butterfield suggested using the BSE technique and provided unpublished pictures of Wiwaxia. Our research was in part supported by a Post-Doctoral Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant (to J.-B.C.) and by a Swedish Research Council grant (to C.S.). Permission to collect Burgess Shale specimens was given by Parks Canada to D. Collins. We are thankful to M. Back and J. Waddington from the Royal Ontario Museum for technical help. This is Royal Ontario Museum Burgess Shale Research Project number 6. Author contributions All four authors made significant contributions to this article.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
Reprints and permissions information is available at npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions. The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Figure 1
Schematic model of Odontogriphus omalus. (PDF 472 kb)
Supplementary Figure 2
Reconstruction of different preservational modes of the radula of Odontogriphus omalus. (PDF 44 kb)
Supplementary Figure 3
Odontogriphus omalus from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale, ROM57718. (PDF 888 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Caron, JB., Scheltema, A., Schander, C. et al. A soft-bodied mollusc with radula from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. Nature 442, 159–163 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04894
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04894
This article is cited by
-
Body reconstruction, taxonomy, and biostratigraphy of a ‘problematic’ chancelloriid
PalZ (2024)
-
Amiskwia is a large Cambrian gnathiferan with complex gnathostomulid-like jaws
Communications Biology (2019)
-
Cambrian suspension-feeding lobopodians and the early radiation of panarthropods
BMC Evolutionary Biology (2017)
-
Orthrozanclus elongata n. sp. and the significance of sclerite-covered taxa for early trochozoan evolution
Scientific Reports (2017)
-
On 20 years of Lophotrochozoa
Organisms Diversity & Evolution (2016)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.