Vetustovermis

Vetustovermis planus
Temporal range: Lower Cambrian
A reconstruction of the closely related species Nectocaris pteryx. The single specimen of Vetustovermis is larger in size than Nectocaris, but it has been postulated that its anatomy was otherwise comparable.[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca (?)
Stem-group: Cephalopoda (?)
Family: †Nectocarididae
Genus: †Vetustovermis
Species: †V. planus
Binomial name
Vetustovermis planus
Glaessner, 1979
Synonyms
  • ?Petalilium Luo & Hu 1999 (possibly a junior synonym)

Vetustovermis (from Latin: "very old worm")[2] is a soft-bodied middle Cambrian animal, possibly a cephalopod. The single reported fossil specimen is from the South Australian Emu Bay shale.

The original description of Vetustovermis hedged its bets regarding classification, but tentatively highlighted some similarities with the annelid worms.[2] It was later considered an arthropod,[3] and in 2010 Smith and Caron, agreeing that Petalilium was at least a close relative of Vetustovermis (but that treating it as a synonym was premature, given the poor preservation of the Vetustovermis type), placed it with Nectocaris in the clade Nectocarididae.[1]

Early press reports misspelled the genus name as Vetustodermis.

References

  1. ^ a b Smith, M. R.; Caron, J. B. (2010). "Primitive soft-bodied cephalopods from the Cambrian". Nature 465 (7297): 469. Bibcode 2010Natur.465..469S. doi:10.1038/nature09068. PMID 20505727. http://individual.utoronto.ca/martinsmith/nectocaris.html.  edit
  2. ^ a b Glaessner, M. F. (1979). "Lower Cambrian Crustacea and annelid worms from Kangaroo Island, South Australia". Alcheringa: an Australasian Journal of Palaeontology 3: 21–29. doi:10.1080/03115517908565437.  edit
  3. ^ Luo H.-L, Hu S.-X, Chen L.-Z. Yunnan Science & Technology Press; Kunming, China: 1999. Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna from Kunming region, China.

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