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Quantification of shape by use of Fourier analysis: the Mississippian blastoid genus Pentremites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

Johnny Arlton Waters
Johnny Arlton Waters*
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, West Georgia College, Carrollton, Georgia 30117
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Abstract

Psychological evidence suggests that the visual outline of an object is the most important character for discriminating differences in external morphology. External morphology is an important taxonomic character in describing living and fossil species, for example, the blastoid Pentremites. Comparison of different views of the same specimen utilizing Fourier series suggests that the skeleton of Pentremites commonly is not rotationally symmetrical and that the asymmetry is not associated with any specific ray. Analysis of a growth series indicates that the amplitudes of the second and third harmonics are significantly correlated with growth, which is demonstrated to be anisometric. Definable changes in the lateral outline can be attributed to changes in harmonic amplitudes and a wide range of morphological forms comparable to known taxa can be generated by systematically varying the amplitudes of the first four harmonics. The population used in this study probably represents Pentremites robustus Lyon and is from Bangor Limestone in the abandoned Moulton Quarry, Lawrence County, Alabama.

Type
Research Article
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , Summer 1977 , pp. 288 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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