LINGULIFORM BRACHIOPODS ACROSS THE STEPTOEAN/SUNWAPTAN (LATE CAMBRIAN) “BIOMERE” BOUNDARY IN THE GREAT BASIN, USA

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca L. Freeman ◽  
◽  
James F. Miller ◽  
Kevin R. Evans ◽  
Damon J. Bassett
Keyword(s):  
1997 ◽  
Vol 71 (6) ◽  
pp. 1091-1109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin D. Sumrall ◽  
James Sprinkle ◽  
Thomas E. Guensburg

Although echinoderm debris is locally common, articulated specimens are rare in Late Cambrian rocks from the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains of the western United States and are mostly associated with hardgrounds. The fauna, including cornute stylophorans, trachelocrinid eocrinoids, solute homoiosteleans, and rare edrioasteroids, includes several members of the archaic Cambrian Evolutionary Fauna, which had already passed its maximum diversity for echinoderms. In addition to the low diversity, articulated specimen abundance is very low, averaging only about one-tenth that found in overlying Lower Ordovician units. The transition between the Cambrian and Paleozoic Evolutionary Faunas for echinoderms in North America apparently occurred rapidly very close to the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary, because no unequivocal examples of the Paleozoic fauna (such as crinoids, glyptocystitid rhombiferans, asteroids, or echinoids) were found in the Late Cambrian sections.New taxa include several cothurnocystid stylophorans assigned to Acuticarpus delticus, new genus and species, Acuticarpus? republicensis, new species, and Archaeocothurnus goshutensis, new genus and species; Scotiaecystis? species, a poorly preserved cornute stylophoran with lamellipores; Minervaecystis? species, a fragmentary solute homoiostelean based on several steles; Tatonkacystis codyensis, new genus and species, a well-preserved trachelocrinid eocrinoid with five unbranched arms bearing numerous brachioles; an unnamed, poorly preserved, epispire-bearing eocrinoid; an unnamed, poorly preserved, globular eocrinoid? lacking epispires; and an unnamed, heavily weathered, edrioasterid edrioasteroid. Nearly all holdfasts found in these Upper Cambrian units are single-piece blastozoan types, probably belonging to trachelocrinid and other eocrinoids. Distinctive columnals and thecal plates of several additional undescribed eocrinoids and other echinoderms were locally abundant and are also described.


2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 355-360
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Westrop ◽  
Jonathan M. Adrain

The poorly known Late Cambrian (Steptoean; Furongian) genus Pseudokingstonia Palmer is revised using new material from the type area in west-central Utah. Previously undocumented features of pygidial morphology, including patterns of segmentation of the axis and pleural fields, and articulating flanges on the anterior margin, confirm that the genus is closely related to the dameselloidean Cheilocephalus Berkey and that together they constitute the family Cheilocephalidae Shaw. Pseudokingstonia is diagnosed by a high degree of cranidial and, especially, pygidial effacement, an exceedingly short anterior border on the cranidium, and steeply sloping pygidial borders. In addition to the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah, the genus is also known from Alberta, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania, and all occurrences are confined to the lower half of the late Steptoean Elvinia Zone.


2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (6) ◽  
pp. 1128-1153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie J. Hopkins

Considerable systematic work devoted to late Cambrian trilobites includes very little species-level phylogenetic analysis. This paper presents the phylogenetic analysis of 36 species representing eight genera assigned to the Family Pterocephaliidae that occur in the Great Basin of the western United States during the Steptoean stage (Furongian). Continuous characters are treated in four different ways: discretization using finite mixture coding, discretization using gap-weighting, “as such” using ranges of values as implemented in the phylogeny program TNT, and exclusion altogether. Results indicate that even the inclusion of only a few continuous characters dramatically increases the resolution of nodes. Despite the different treatments of continuous characters, major features of the trees are shared across all results. The subfamily Pterocephaliinae is restricted to genera which possess a concave anterior border. Relative stratigraphic placement was estimated using a composite section built in CONOP and used to scale the tree topologies and to assess stratigraphic consistency. Although previously hypothesized multispecies evolutionary series are not supported by the results, tree topology, stratigraphic distribution, and optimized character state transformation support the interpretation of several sister taxa as direct ancestor-descendent pairs.


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