Extraordinary fossils reveal the nature of Cambrian life: a commentary on Whittington (1975) 'The enigmatic animal Opabinia regalis, Middle Cambrian, Burgess Shale, British Columbia'.
Harry Whittington's 1975 monograph on Opabinia was the first to highlight how some of the Burgess Shale animals differ markedly from those that populate today's oceans. Categorized by Stephen J. Gould as a 'weird wonder' (Wonderful life, 1989) Opabinia, together with other unusual Burgess Shale fossils, stimulated ongoing debates about the early evolution of the major animal groups and the nature of the Cambrian explosion. The subsequent discovery of a number of other exceptionally preserved fossil faunas of Cambrian and early Ordovician age has significantly augmented the information available on this critical interval in the history of life. Although Opabinia initially defied assignment to any group of modern animals, it is now interpreted as lying below anomalocaridids on the stem leading to the living arthropods. This commentary was written to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Department of Geology and Geophysics and Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, PO Box 208109, New Haven, CT 06520-8109, USA derek.briggs@yale.edu.
Derek E G
DE
Briggs
D000818:Animals; D001181:Arthropods / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001955:British Columbia; D005580:Fossils / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D010163:Paleontology / Q000266:history*
Burgess Shale; Cambrian explosion; Opabinia; fossil preservation