Supplementary material from "New insight into the global record of the Ediacaran tubular morphotype: A common solution to early multicellularity" ...

• Main Authors: Surprenant, Rachel, Droser, Mary L.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: The Royal Society 2024
• Subjects: Environmental biogeochemistry; Other environmental sciences not elsewhere classified; White Sea
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.7100170.v1; https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_New_insight_into_the_global_record_of_the_Ediacaran_tubular_morphotype_A_common_solution_to_early_multicellularity_/7100170/1

The tubular morphogroup is a common component of Earth’s first complex, multicellular communities—the Ediacara Biota—and offers valuable insight into biological traits that are fundamental to animal life because they have intriguing links to metazoan phyla and are highly abundant in Ediacaran ecosystems. Biomineral tubes (e.g., Cloudina) are well-described from the Nama Assemblage (~550-538 Ma), yielding a relatively detailed understanding of this subset of the morphogroup. Conversely, the non-biomineral tubular taxa of the Nama Assemblage, as well as of the older White Sea Assemblage (~560-550 Ma), are poorly understood. As a result, the variability of characters that define non-biomineral tubular organisms are unknown and their diversity dynamics throughout the terminal Ediacaran are unconstrained. To test hypotheses related to the diversity, morphological variability, and temporal distribution of non-biomineral tubes, a comprehensive database of non-biomineral Ediacaran tubular taxa was compiled. Results ...