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A new helcionelloid mollusk from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale, Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2015

Simon Conway Morris  and
John S. Peel
Simon Conway Morris
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, Downing Street, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, England,
John S. Peel
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences (Palaeobiology), Uppsala University, Villavägen 16, Uppsala, SE-752 36, Sweden,
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Abstract

Burgess Shale-type faunas provide unique insights into the Cambrian “explosion”. Their degree of representativeness of Cambrian marine life in general is, however, less easy to establish. One line of evidence is to consider only the skeletal component of a Burgess Shale-type fauna and compare that with a typical Cambrian assemblage. This paper describes a new species of helcionelloid mollusk (Totoralia reticulata n. sp.) from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia. Whilst much rarer than the co-occurring smooth shelled helcionelloid Scenella amii, the strongly costate morphology of Totoralia reinforces comparisons with Cambrian shelly faunas. The extension of the range of Totoralia from Argentina to Canada adds support to the proposed derivation of the Precordillera terrane of Mendoza from Laurentia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 87 , Issue 6 , November 2013 , pp. 1067 - 1070
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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