Everything about Amiskwia totally explained
Amiskwia is a small, soft-bodied
invertebrate of unknown affinity known from
fossils of the Middle
Cambrian Lagerstätten both in the
Burgess shale formation in
British Columbia and the
Maotianshan shales of
Yunnan Province, China.
Very few specimens of this organism have been found, only five in the Burgess shale — which may be a reflection of its genuine rarity, but is more likely to be due to taphonomic (preservational) or behavioural factors. The fossils reach in length. The head is rounded, tipped with two
tentacles, and appears to contain a four-
ganglion brain; the body flattens out and broadens in the trunk, which appears to have been fairly muscular. Where the trunk meets the head there's a small tubular opening, which can be interpreted as the mouth; the gut terminates where the trunk narrows and meets the tail, which is broad and paddle shaped. The body morphology suggests a free energetic swimmer, which may be consistent with the dearth of fossils.
Amiskwia was originally categorized by
paleontologist Charles Walcott. Walcott thought he saw three buccal spines in the fossils, and therefore categorized
Amiskwia as a
chaetognath worm (arrow worm). However,
Amiskwia appears to lack the characteristic grasping spines and teeth of other Burgess fossil arrow worms, so later scientists suggested it was more likely a
nemertean (ribbon worm).
Conway Morris, on re-examining of the Burgess Shale fauna in the 1970s, described it as being the single known species in an otherwise unknown
phylum, given that it has two tentacles near its mouth, rather than the characteristic single tentacle of true nemerteans.
Butterfield implies from the appearance of the fossils that the organisms may have lacked a cuticle: whilst this is also true of the nemerteans, these organisms lack a
coelom and are thus unlikely to fossilise. He goes on to argue that the absence of cuticle is characteristic of the
Chaetognaths; whilst teeth would be expected, a similar fossil,
Wiwaxia, only shows such structures in 10% of the expected instances, and
Anamolocarids are often found detached from their mouthparts, so the absence may be taphonomic rather than genuine. The absence of spines could simply mean that the fossils represent young organisms — or that later chaetognath evolution involved
paedomorphosis.
While more work on undescribed specimens is required before firm consensus is reached, the discovery of
P. spinosa, which strongly resembles modern Chaetognaths, in sediments of a similar age in
Chengjiang biota places doubts on its position in the Chaetognath crown group. Of course, many similarly enigmatic Cambrian fossils probably represent
stem groups to living taxa, and there's no reason to assume that this organism must fall into an extant crown group at all.
The name
Amiskwia sagittiformis derives from the nearby Amiskwia river, and its shape.
Further Information
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