Bomakellia kelleri
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Bomakellia kelleri was an 8–9½ cm long Ediacaran organism that lived in the ocean at what is now the shores of the White Sea of Russia. It has a long body lined with oval-shaped appendages, giving it a tri-lobed appearance, and has a rounded, vaguely triangular shield on one end (identified as a cephalon by some, a holdfast by others).
Some Precambrian experts suggest that it, like the Edicarans Charnia and Rangea, was a colonial cnidarian, much in the manner of a modern-day sea pen.
Most experts, however, note its extreme similarity to the Edicarans "Flinders soft-bodied trilobite," and Spriggina, and postulate that it was some sort of primitive arthropod, possibly a precursor to trilobites.
B. M. Waggoner suggested that B. kelleri is a primitive anomalocarid, the earliest known species, in fact [1]. Waggoner went on to identify ridges in the cephalon as being eyes, making this creature the earliest known animal with sight. However, Mark McMenamin, in his book The Garden of Ediacara, mentions that no one besides Waggoner has been able to find these "eye-ridges."[2]
[edit] External Links
- Sam Gon's Origins of Trilobites
[edit] References
- ^ B. M. Waggoner (1996). Phylogenic Hypotheses of the Relationships of Arthropods to Precambrian and Cambrian Problematic Fossil Taxa. Systematic Biology 45: 280–293.
- ^ McMenamin, Mark A. S. (1998). The Garden of Ediacara. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10559-2.
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