TY - JOUR

T1 - The developmental biology of Charnia and the eumetazoan affinity of the Ediacaran rangeomorphs

AU - Dunn, Frances S.

AU - Liu, Alexander G.

AU - Grazhdankin, Dmitriy V.

AU - Vixseboxse, Philip

AU - Flannery-Sutherland, Joseph

AU - Green, Emily

AU - Harris, Simon

AU - Wilby, Philip R.

AU - Donoghue, Philip C.J.

N1 - Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).

PY - 2021/7

Y1 - 2021/7

N2 - Molecular timescales estimate that early animal lineages diverged tens of millions of years before their earliest unequivocal fossil evidence. The Ediacaran macrobiota (∼574 to 538 million years ago) are largely eschewed from this debate, primarily due to their extreme phylogenetic uncertainty, but remain germane. We characterize the development of Charnia masoni and establish the affinity of rangeomorphs, among the oldest and most enigmatic components of the Ediacaran macrobiota. We provide the first direct evidence for the internal interconnected nature of rangeomorphs and show that Charnia was constructed of repeated branches that derived successively from pre-existing branches. We find homology and rationalize morphogenesis between disparate rangeomorph taxa, before producing a phylogenetic analysis, resolving Charnia as a stem-eumetazoan and expanding the anatomical disparity of that group to include a long-extinct bodyplan. These data bring competing records of early animal evolution into closer agreement, reformulating our understanding of the evolutionary emergence of animal bodyplans.

AB - Molecular timescales estimate that early animal lineages diverged tens of millions of years before their earliest unequivocal fossil evidence. The Ediacaran macrobiota (∼574 to 538 million years ago) are largely eschewed from this debate, primarily due to their extreme phylogenetic uncertainty, but remain germane. We characterize the development of Charnia masoni and establish the affinity of rangeomorphs, among the oldest and most enigmatic components of the Ediacaran macrobiota. We provide the first direct evidence for the internal interconnected nature of rangeomorphs and show that Charnia was constructed of repeated branches that derived successively from pre-existing branches. We find homology and rationalize morphogenesis between disparate rangeomorph taxa, before producing a phylogenetic analysis, resolving Charnia as a stem-eumetazoan and expanding the anatomical disparity of that group to include a long-extinct bodyplan. These data bring competing records of early animal evolution into closer agreement, reformulating our understanding of the evolutionary emergence of animal bodyplans.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85111173929&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1126/sciadv.abe0291

DO - 10.1126/sciadv.abe0291

M3 - Article

C2 - 34301594

AN - SCOPUS:85111173929

VL - 7

JO - Science advances

JF - Science advances

SN - 2375-2548

IS - 30

M1 - eabe0291

ER -