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Wiwaxia
''Wiwaxia'' is a genus of soft-bodied animals that were covered in carbonaceous scales and spines that protected it from predators. ''Wiwaxia'' fossils—mainly isolated scales, but sometimes complete, articulated fossils—are known from early Cambrian and middle Cambrian fossil deposits across the globe. The living animal would have measured up to when fully grown, although a range of juvenile specimens are known, the smallest being long. ''Wiwaxia'' affinity has been a matter of debate: Researchers were long split between two possibilities. On the one hand, its rows of scales looked superficially similar to certain scale worms (annelids); conversely, its mouthparts and general morphology suggested a relationship to the shell-less molluscs. More recently, evidence for a molluscan affinity has been accumulating, based on new details of ''Wiwaxia'' mouthparts, scales, and growth history. The name derives from Wiwaxy Peak in British Columbia. The proposed clade Halwaxiida con ...
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Halwaxiida
Halwaxiida or halwaxiids is a proposed clade equivalent to the older orders Sachitida He 1980 and Thambetolepidea Jell 1981, loosely uniting scale-bearing Cambrian animals, which may lie in the stem group to molluscs or lophotrochozoa. Some palaeontologists question the validity of the Halwaxiida clade. Definition and members The name "halwaxiid" was formed by combining the names of two members of the proposed group, '' Halkieria'' and '' Wiwaxia''. The group was defined as a set of Early to Mid Cambrian animals that had: a "chain mail" coat of three concentric bands of small armor plates that are called sclerites; in some cases, a small cap-like shell at the front end and in some cases both ends. Some scientists are unhappy with this loose definition, arguing that such traits may have arisen convergently rather than being inherited from a common ancestor. This objection implies that the group may not be monophyletic, and that their similarities are not biologically equivale ...
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Sclerite
A sclerite (Greek language, Greek , ', meaning "hardness, hard") is a hardened body part. In various branches of biology the term is applied to various structures, but not as a rule to vertebrate anatomical features such as bones and teeth. Instead it refers most commonly to the hardened parts of arthropod exoskeletons and the internal wikt:spicule, spicules of invertebrates such as certain sponges and Alcyonacea, soft corals. In paleontology, a scleritome is the complete set of sclerites of an organism, often all that is known from fossil invertebrates. Sclerites in combination Sclerites may occur practically isolated in an organism, such as the Stinger, sting of a Conus, cone shell. Also, they can be more or less scattered, such as tufts of defensive sharp, mineralised bristles as in many marine polychaetes. Or, they can occur as structured, but unconnected or loosely connected arrays, such as the mineral "teeth" in the radula of many Mollusca, the Valve (mollusc), valves of chit ...
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Canadia (annelid)
''Canadia'' (meaning ''of Canada'' or ''after Canada'') is a genus of extinct annelid worm present in Burgess Shale type Konservat-Lagerstätte. It is found in strata dating back to the Delamaran stage of the Middle Cambrian around 505 million years ago, during the time of the Cambrian explosion. It was about in length. Charles Doolittle Walcott named ''Canadia'' in 1911 after Canada, the country from which its remains have been found. 28 specimens of ''Canadia'' are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.05% of the community. Description With length up to , the animal's most notable feature is the many notosetae (rigid setae extending from dorsal branches of notopodia) along the back of the animal that are characteristic of polychaete worms. A 1998 paper suggested that it may have been iridescent due to the supposed presence of diffraction gratings, however other studies have interpreted these structures as internal microvilli. Tentacles extended from ...
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Molluscs
Mollusca is a phylum of protostome, protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant taxon, extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum after Arthropoda. The number of additional fossil species is estimated between 60,000 and 100,000, and the proportion of undescribed species is very high. Many taxa remain poorly studied. Molluscs are the largest marine biology, marine phylum, comprising about 23% of all the named marine organisms. They are highly diverse, not just in size and anatomical structure, but also in behaviour and habitat, as numerous groups are freshwater mollusc, freshwater and even terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial species. The phylum is typically divided into 7 or 8 taxonomy (biology), taxonomic class (biology), classes, of which two are entirely extinct. Cephalopod molluscs, such as squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses, are among the most neurobiology, neurologi ...
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Annelid
The annelids (), also known as the segmented worms, are animals that comprise the phylum Annelida (; ). The phylum contains over 22,000 extant species, including ragworms, earthworms, and leeches. The species exist in and have adapted to various ecologies – some in marine environments as distinct as tidal zones and hydrothermal vents, others in fresh water, and yet others in moist terrestrial environments. The annelids are bilaterally symmetrical, triploblastic, coelomate, invertebrate organisms. They also have parapodia for locomotion. Most textbooks still use the traditional division into polychaetes (almost all marine), oligochaetes (which include earthworms) and leech-like species. Cladistic research since 1997 has radically changed this scheme, viewing leeches as a sub-group of oligochaetes and oligochaetes as a sub-group of polychaetes. In addition, the Pogonophora, Echiura and Sipuncula, previously regarded as separate phyla, are now regarded as sub-grou ...
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Marrella
''Marrella'' is an extinct genus of marrellomorph arthropod known from the Middle Cambrian of North America and Asia. It is the most common animal represented in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada, with tens of thousands of specimens collected. Much rarer remains are also known from deposits in China. History ''Marrella'' was the first fossil collected by Charles Doolittle Walcott from the Burgess Shale, in 1909. Walcott described ''Marrella'' informally as a "lace crab" and described it more formally as an odd trilobite. It was later reassigned to the now defunct class Trilobitoidea in the ''Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology''. In 1971, Whittington undertook a thorough redescription of the animal and, on the basis of its legs, gills and head appendages, concluded that it was neither a trilobite, nor a chelicerate, nor a crustacean. ''Marrella'' is one of several unique arthropod-like organisms found in the Burgess Shale. Other examples are '' Opabinia'' and ' ...
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Wiwaxy Peak
Wiwaxy Peaks is a mountain near Lake O'Hara in Yoho National Park, in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. The Burgess Shale animal '' Wiwaxia corrugata'' is named after it. The nearest higher neighbor is Mount Huber, to the east. History It was named in 1894 by Samuel E.S. Allen for the Stoney First Nations word for "windy". The mountain's current name became official in 1924 when the Geographical Names Board of Canada approved its name. The first ascent of the mountain was made in 1951 by T. Church, D. Pullin, W. Roubenheimer, and T. Whalley. Geology Wiwaxy Peaks is composed of sedimentary rock laid down during the Precambrian to Jurassic periods. Formed in shallow seas, this sedimentary rock was pushed east and over the top of younger rock during the Laramide orogeny. Climate Based on the Köppen climate classification, Wiwaxy Peaks is located in a subarctic climate zone with cold, snowy winters, and mild summers. Temperatures can drop below −20 °C w ...
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Lophotrochozoan
Lophotrochozoa (, "crest/wheel animals") is a clade of protostome animals within the Spiralia. The taxon was established as a monophyletic group based on molecular evidence. The clade includes animals like annelids, molluscs, bryozoans, and brachiopods. Groups Lophotrochozoa was defined in 1995 as the "last common ancestor of the three traditional lophophorate taxa (brachiopods, bryozoans, and phoronid worms), the mollusks and the annelids, and all of the descendants of that common ancestor". It is a cladistic definition (a node-based name), so the affiliation to Lophotrochozoa of spiralian groups not mentioned directly in the definition depends on the topology of the spiralian tree of life, and in some phylogenetic hypotheses, Lophotrochozoa may even be synonymous to Spiralia. Nemertea and Orthonectida (if not directly considered as part of Annelida) are probably lophotrochozoan phyla; Dicyemida, Gastrotricha, and Platyhelminthes may be lophotrochozoans or placed in the Rouph ...
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Monocot
Monocotyledons (), commonly referred to as monocots, (Lilianae ''sensu'' Chase & Reveal) are flowering plants whose seeds contain only one Embryo#Plant embryos, embryonic leaf, or cotyledon. A monocot taxon has been in use for several decades, but with various ranks and under several different names. The APG IV system recognises its monophyly but does not assign it to a taxonomic rank, and instead uses the term "monocots" to refer to the group. Monocotyledons are contrasted with the Dicotyledon, dicotyledons, which have two cotyledons. Unlike the monocots however, the dicots are not Monophyly, monophyletic and the two cotyledons are instead the ancestral characteristic of all flowering plants. Botanists now classify dicots into the eudicots ("true dicots") and several Basal (phylogenetics), basal lineages from which the monocots emerged. The monocots are extremely important economically, culturally, and ecologically, and make up a majority of plant biomass used in agriculture. Com ...
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Scanning Electron Microscope
A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is a type of electron microscope that produces images of a sample by scanning the surface with a focused beam of electrons. The electrons interact with atoms in the sample, producing various signals that contain information about the surface topography and composition. The electron beam is scanned in a raster scan pattern, and the position of the beam is combined with the intensity of the detected signal to produce an image. In the most common SEM mode, secondary electrons emitted by atoms excited by the electron beam are detected using a secondary electron detector ( Everhart–Thornley detector). The number of secondary electrons that can be detected, and thus the signal intensity, depends, among other things, on specimen topography. Some SEMs can achieve resolutions better than 1 nanometer. Specimens are observed in high vacuum in a conventional SEM, or in low vacuum or wet conditions in a variable pressure or environmental SEM, an ...
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Banana
A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing them from dessert bananas. The fruit is variable in size, color and firmness, but is usually elongated and curved, with soft flesh rich in starch covered with a peel, which may have a variety of colors when ripe. It grows upward in clusters near the top of the plant. Almost all modern edible seedless ( parthenocarp) cultivated bananas come from two wild species – '' Musa acuminata'' and ''Musa balbisiana'', or hybrids of them. ''Musa'' species are native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia; they were probably domesticated in New Guinea. They are grown in 135 countries, primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent to make banana paper and textiles, while some are grown as ornamental plants. The world's largest producers of bananas ...
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Iridescent
Iridescence (also known as goniochromism) is the phenomenon of certain surfaces that appear gradually to change colour as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes. Iridescence is caused by wave interference of light in microstructures or thin films. Examples of iridescence include soap bubbles, feathers, butterfly wings and seashell nacre, and minerals such as opal. Pearlescence is a related effect where some or most of the reflected light is white. The term pearlescent is used to describe certain paint finishes, usually in the automotive industry, which actually produce iridescent effects. Etymology The word ''iridescence'' is derived in part from the Greek word ἶρις ''îris'' ( gen. ἴριδος ''íridos''), meaning ''rainbow'', and is combined with the Latin suffix ''-escent'', meaning "having a tendency toward". Iris in turn derives from the goddess Iris of Greek mythology, who is the personification of the rainbow and acted as a messenger of the g ...
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