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The Oldest Arthropods and the Origin of the Crustacea
Author(s) -
Bergström Jan
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
acta zoologica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.414
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1463-6395
pISSN - 0001-7272
DOI - 10.1111/j.1463-6395.1992.tb01093.x
Subject(s) - crustacean , biology , synapomorphy , arthropod , zoology , fauna , ecology , evolutionary biology , paleontology , clade , phylogenetics , biochemistry , gene
In the last decade new finds in the Cambrian of well‐preserved faunas have given us a wealth of new material. This has meant a virtual explosion in our knowledge of the earliest arthropods, although only a fraction of the material has as yet been described. Most significantly, perhaps, the valuable descriptions of the Orsten material have shed some light on the origination of crustaceans through the sequential acquisition of crustacean characters in a group of ‘stemgroup crustaceans’ and even more basic forms. An attempt is made to outline an evolutionary tree leading on one side to trilobitomorphs and chelicerates, on the other to crustaceans and related forms. It involves numbers of synapomorphies added successively, and it appears unlikely that true crustaceans were present already in the earliest Cambrian.