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Modern mucociliary creeping trails and the bodyplans of Neoproterozoic trace-makers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Allen G. Collins ,
Jere H. Lipps  and
James W. Valentine
Allen G. Collins
Affiliation:
Department of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Jere H. Lipps
Affiliation:
Department of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
James W. Valentine
Affiliation:
Department of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
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Abstract

The bulk of Neoproterozoic trace fossils can be interpreted as horizontal creeping trails produced by minute vermiform organisms moving on or just beneath the seafloor or under algal mats. We have investigated the formation of trails by living cnidarians and platyhelminths that creep by cilia on mucus ribbons. These relatively simple metazoans produce trails that are similar in size and morphology to some Neoproterozoic traces, owing to the entrainment of sediment within their mucus trails. Thus a mucociliary locomotory system provides sufficient means to form some types of Neoproterozoic traces. It follows that the body architectures of the Neoproterozoic trace-makers may have been quite simple, though complex bodyplans are, of course, not ruled out. Thus, the use of Neoproterozoic trace fossils to constrain the time of origin of bilaterians or of any crown-group bilaterian taxon remains questionable.

Type
Articles
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Winter 2000 , pp. 47 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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