''Margaretia'' is a
frondose organism known from the middle Cambrian
Burgess shale and the
Kinzers Formation of
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...
. Its fronds reached about 10 cm in length and are peppered with a range of length-parallel oval holes. It was originally interpreted as an
alcyonarian coral
Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important Coral ...
.
It was later reclassified as a green alga closely resembling modern ''
Caulerpa'' by D.F. Satterthwait in her Ph.D. thesis in 1976,
[Donna Fields Satterthwait, Paleobiology and Paleoecology of Middle Cambrian Algae from Western North America, Ph.D. Thesis University of California at Los Angeles, 1976.] a finding supported by Conway Morris and Robison in 1988.
[S.Conway Morris and R.A. Robison, "More soft-bodied Animals and Algae from the Middle Cambrian of Utah and British Columbia", University of Kansas Paleontological Contributions, Paper 122, pages 8-11, 1988]
/ref> More recently, it has been treated as an organic tube, that is used as nest of hemichordate '' Oesia''.
References
External links
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Burgess Shale fossils
Wheeler Shale
Incertae sedis
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