US Edition540-Million-Year-Old Fossil Finally Classified as Cnidarian
The reclassification of Salterella as a cnidarian resolves a decades-old mystery and sheds light on early animal shell evolution, based on four years of fossil analysis.
- Recently, Prescott Vayda and Shuhai Xiao concluded Salterella and Volborthella belong to the cnidarian group, after analyzing fossils from Death Valley, the Yukon, and Wythe County, Virginia.
- The fossil's long history of misclassification included grouping Salterella with squids, sea slugs, jellyfish ancestors, and worms before 1970s researchers created a separate category for Salterella and Volborthella; Prescott Vayda said `It makes Salterella difficult to place on the tree of life`.
- Detailed study shows Salterella used a double construction with an outer conical shell and inner cavity filled with selected mineral grains, avoiding clay, tolerating quartz, and preferring titanium-rich grains, while fossils hint at small appendages for arranging grains.
- The reclassification reconnects a lost branch of early animal evolution by linking Salterella and Volborthella to the cnidarian group, offering fresh insight into biomineralization origins and complex shell evolution.
- In the broader Cambrian context, many groups evolved shells, and Prescott Vayda's four-year sampling effort revealed Salterella's double construction adds a new example to early Cambrian innovation.
12 Articles
12 Articles
Eurek Alert
vt.eduA skeleton and a shell? Ancient fossil finally finds home on the tree of life
Picky, pragmatic, and enigmatic — a tiny fossil found in Southwestern Virginia eluded classification for more than 514 million years. Now, Virginia Tech geoscientists have restored this unique organism into its evolutionary lineage.
A 540-million-year-old fossil is rewriting evolution
Over 500 million years ago, the Cambrian Period sparked an explosion of skeletal creativity. Salterella, a peculiar fossil, defied conventions by combining two different mineral-building methods. After decades of confusion, scientists have linked it to the cnidarian family. The find deepens our understanding of how animals first learned to build their own skeletons.
The Strange 540-Million-Year-Old Fossil Shaking Up Evolutionary History
A strange Cambrian fossil named Salterella may hold the key to understanding how early animals first built skeletons. As the season of skeletons approaches, it’s worth remembering that the real “age of skeletons” began hundreds of millions of years ago during the early Cambrian Period, roughly 53
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