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Lower Ordovician synziphosurine reveals early euchelicerate diversity and evolution
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Lower Ordovician synziphosurine reveals early euchelicerate diversity and evolution
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Journal Article
Lower Ordovician synziphosurine reveals early euchelicerate diversity and evolution
2024
Overview
Euchelicerata is a clade of arthropods comprising horseshoe crabs, scorpions, spiders, mites and ticks, as well as the extinct eurypterids (sea scorpions) and chasmataspidids. The understanding of the ground plans and relationships between these crown-group euchelicerates has benefited from the discovery of numerous fossils. However, little is known regarding the origin and early evolution of the euchelicerate body plan because the relationships between their Cambrian sister taxa and synziphosurines, a group of Silurian to Carboniferous stem euchelicerates with chelicerae and an unfused opisthosoma, remain poorly understood owing to the scarce fossil record of appendages. Here we describe a synziphosurine from the Lower Ordovician (ca. 478 Ma) Fezouata Shale of Morocco. This species possesses five biramous appendages with stenopodous exopods bearing setae in the prosoma and a fully expressed first tergite in the opisthosoma illuminating the ancestral anatomy of the group. Phylogenetic analyses recover this fossil as a member of the stem euchelicerate family Offacolidae, which is characterized by biramous prosomal appendages. Moreover, it also shares anatomical features with the Cambrian euarthropod
Habelia optata
, filling the anatomical gap between euchelicerates and Cambrian stem taxa, while also contributing to our understanding of the evolution of euchelicerate uniramous prosomal appendages and tagmosis.
Here, the authors describe an early synziphosurine from the Lower Ordovician Fezouata Shale of Morocco, which exhibits traits that elucidate the long-contentious relationships between crown euchelicerates and their sister taxa, and also clarifies euchelicerate body plan evolution.
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
Subject
