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Peytoia Nathorsti
''Peytoia'' is a genus of hurdiid radiodont that lived in the Cambrian period, containing two species, ''Peytoia nathorsti'' from the Miaolingian of Canada and '' Peytoia infercambriensis'' from Poland, dating to Cambrian Stage 3. Its two frontal appendages had long bristle-like spines, it had no fan tail, and its short stalked eyes were behind its large head. 108 specimens of ''Peytoia'' are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.21% of the community. ''Peytoia nathorsti'' and its junior synonym ''Laggania cambria'' played a major role in the discovery of the radiodont body plan. Initially interpreted as a jellyfish and a sea cucumber respectively, they were eventually shown to be the mouthparts and body of a single animal, which bore ''Anomalocaris''-like appendages. ''Peytoia infercambriensis'' is the geologically oldest known radiodont species. Classification ''Peytoia'' belongs to the clade Hurdiidae, and is closely related to the contemporary genus ...
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Radiodont
Radiodonta is an extinct order of stem-group arthropods that was successful worldwide during the Cambrian period. They may be referred to as radiodonts, radiodontans, radiodontids, anomalocarids, or anomalocaridids, although the last two originally refer to the family Anomalocarididae, which previously included all species of this order but is now restricted to only a few species. Radiodonts are distinguished by their distinctive frontal appendages, which are morphologically diverse and used for a variety of functions. Radiodonts included the earliest large predators known, but they also included sediment sifters and filter feeders. Some of the most famous species of radiodonts are the Cambrian taxa ''Anomalocaris canadensis'', ''Hurdia victoria'', ''Peytoia nathorsti'', '' Titanokorys gainessii, Cambroraster falcatus'' and ''Amplectobelua symbrachiata'', the Ordovician '' Aegirocassis benmoulai'' and the Devonian ''Schinderhannes bartelsi''. Etymology The name Radiodonta (Latin ...
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Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can reproduction, produce Fertility, fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology (biology), morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. However, only about 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a binomial nomenclature, two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specifi ...
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Burgess Shale
The Burgess Shale is a fossil-bearing deposit exposed in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils. At old (middle Cambrian), it is one of the earliest fossil beds containing soft-part imprints. The rock unit is a black shale and crops out at a number of localities near the town of Field in Yoho National Park and the Kicking Horse Pass. Another outcrop is in Kootenay National Park 42 km to the south. History and significance The Burgess Shale was discovered by palaeontologist Charles Walcott on 30 August 1909, towards the end of the season's fieldwork. He returned in 1910 with his sons, daughter, and wife, establishing a quarry on the flanks of Fossil Ridge. The significance of soft-bodied preservation, and the range of organisms he recognised as new to science, led him to return to the quarry almost every year until 1924. At that point, aged 74, he had amassed over 65,000 ...
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Holothurian
Sea cucumbers are echinoderms from the class Holothuroidea (). They are marine animals with a leathery skin and an elongated body containing a single, branched gonad. Sea cucumbers are found on the sea floor worldwide. The number of holothurian () species worldwide is about 1,717, with the greatest number being in the Asia-Pacific region. Many of these are gathered for human consumption and some species are cultivated in aquaculture systems. The harvested product is variously referred to as '' trepang'', ''namako'', ''bêche-de-mer'', or ''balate''. Sea cucumbers serve a useful role in the marine ecosystem as they help recycle nutrients, breaking down detritus and other organic matter, after which bacteria can continue the decomposition process. Like all echinoderms, sea cucumbers have an endoskeleton just below the skin, calcified structures that are usually reduced to isolated microscopic ossicles (or sclerietes) joined by connective tissue. In some species these can sometim ...
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Charles Doolittle Walcott
Charles Doolittle Walcott (March 31, 1850February 9, 1927) was an American paleontologist, administrator of the Smithsonian Institution from 1907 to 1927, and director of the United States Geological Survey.Wonderful Life (book) by Stephen Jay Gould published in 1989, Chapter 4 He is famous for his discovery in 1909 of well-preserved fossils, including some of the oldest soft-part imprints, in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada. Early life Charles Doolittle Walcott was born on March 31, 1850 in New York Mills, New York. His grandfather, Benjamin S. Walcott, moved from Rhode Island in 1822. His father, also Charles Doolittle Walcott, died when Charles Jr. was only two. Walcott was the youngest of four children. He was interested in nature from an early age, collecting minerals and bird eggs and, eventually, fossils. He attended various schools in the Utica area but left at the age of eighteen without completing high school, the end of his formal education. His intere ...
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Crustacean
Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can be treated as a subphylum under the clade Mandibulata. It is now well accepted that the hexapods emerged deep in the Crustacean group, with the completed group referred to as Pancrustacea. Some crustaceans ( Remipedia, Cephalocarida, Branchiopoda) are more closely related to insects and the other hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans. The 67,000 described species range in size from '' Stygotantulus stocki'' at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span of up to and a mass of . Like other arthropods, crustaceans have an exoskeleton, which they moult to grow. They are distinguished from other groups of arthropods, such as insects, myriapods and chelicerates, by the possession of biramous (two-parted) l ...
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Phyllocarida
Phyllocarida is a subclass of crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean gro ...s, comprising the extant order Leptostraca and the extinct orders Hymenostraca and Archaeostraca. See also *'' Ceratiocaris'' *'' Cinerocaris'' *'' Vladicaris'' References External links Malacostraca Arthropod subclasses Paleozoic crustaceans Mesozoic crustaceans Cenozoic crustaceans Extant Cambrian first appearances Taxa described in 1879 Taxa named by Alpheus Spring Packard {{Malacostraca-stub ...
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Joseph Frederick Whiteaves
Joseph Frederick Whiteaves (December 26, 1835 – August 8, 1909), was a British palaeontologist. Born in Oxford, Whiteaves was educated at private schools, and afterwards worked under John Phillips at Oxford (1858–1861); he was led to study the Oolitic rocks, and added largely to our knowledge of the fossils of the Great Oolite series, Cornbrash and Corallian. He visited Canada in 1861 and made acquaintance with the geology of Quebec and Montreal, and in 1863 he was appointed curator of the museum and secretary of the Natural History Society of Montreal, posts which he occupied until 1875. He studied the land and freshwater mollusca of Lower Canada, and the marine invertebrata of the coasts; and also carried on researches among the older Silurian (or Ordovician) fossils of the neighbourhood of Montreal. In 1875, he joined the palaeontological branch of the Geological Survey of Canada at Montreal; in the following year he became a palaeontologist, and in 1877 he was fur ...
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Fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the ''fossil record''. Paleontology is the study of fossils: their age, method of formation, and evolutionary significance. Specimens are usually considered to be fossils if they are over 10,000 years old. The oldest fossils are around 3.48 billion years old to 4.1 billion years old. Early edition, published online before print. The observation in the 19th century that certain fossils were associated with certain rock strata led to the recognition of a geological timescale and the relative ages of different fossils. The development of radiometric dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed scientists to quantitatively measure the abs ...
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Mineralization (biology)
Biomineralization, also written biomineralisation, is the process by which living organisms produce minerals, often to harden or stiffen existing tissues. Such tissues are called mineralized tissues. It is an extremely widespread phenomenon; all six taxonomic kingdoms contain members that are able to form minerals, and over 60 different minerals have been identified in organisms. Examples include silicates in algae and diatoms, carbonates in invertebrates, and calcium phosphates and carbonates in vertebrates. These minerals often form structural features such as sea shells and the bone in mammals and birds. Organisms have been producing mineralized skeletons for the past 550 million years. Calcium carbonates and calcium phosphates are usually crystalline, but silica organisms (sponges, diatoms...) are always non crystalline minerals. Other examples include copper, iron and gold deposits involving bacteria. Biologically formed minerals often have special uses such as m ...
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Laggania
''Peytoia'' is a genus of hurdiid radiodont that lived in the Cambrian period, containing two species, ''Peytoia nathorsti'' from the Miaolingian of Canada and ''Peytoia infercambriensis'' from Poland, dating to Cambrian Stage 3. Its two frontal appendages had long bristle-like spines, it had no fan tail, and its short stalked eyes were behind its large head. 108 specimens of ''Peytoia'' are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.21% of the community. ''Peytoia nathorsti'' and its junior synonym ''Laggania cambria'' played a major role in the discovery of the radiodont body plan. Initially interpreted as a jellyfish and a sea cucumber respectively, they were eventually shown to be the mouthparts and body of a single animal, which bore ''Anomalocaris''-like appendages. ''Peytoia infercambriensis'' is the geologically oldest known radiodont species. Classification ''Peytoia'' belongs to the clade Hurdiidae, and is closely related to the contemporary genus ' ...
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USNM 57538 Peytoia Nathorsti Oral Cone
The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7.1 million visitors, it was the eighteenth most visited museum in the world and the second most visited natural history museum in the world after the Natural History Museum in London."The World's most popular museums", CNN.com, 22 June 2017. Opened in 1910, the museum on the National Mall was one of the first Smithsonian buildings constructed exclusively to hold the national collections and research facilities. The main building has an overall area of with of exhibition and public space and houses over 1,000 employees. The museum's collections contain over 145 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, the largest natural history collection in the wor ...
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