ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Sponge grade body fossil with cellular resolution dating 60 Myr before the Cambrian.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers.
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51 citing papers in PubMed, 229 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Three-dimensional reconstruction of ediacaran ceramiales (Rhodophyta) from the phosphorite doushantuo formation, South China.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history.Science advances · 2026Article
- The architecture of sponge choanocyte chambers is well adapted to mechanical pumping functions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- A Morphospace Exploration Using a General Model of Development Reveals a Basic Set of Morphologies for Early Animal Development and Evolution.Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution · 2025Article
- Is the concept of mammalian epigenetic clocks universal and applicable to invertebrates?Frontiers in genetics · 2025Article
- Survival strategies for the microbiome in a vent-dwelling glass sponge from the middle Okinawa Trough.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Genome-scale metabolic modelling reveals interactions and key roles of symbiont clades in a sponge holobiont.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Gene networks governing the response of a calcareous sponge to future ocean conditions reveal lineage-specificEcology and evolution · 2024Article
- Developmental biology ofProceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Chapter 5: Major Biological Innovations in the History of Life on Earth.Astrobiology · 2024Article
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- Respiration kinetics and allometric scaling in the demosponge Halichondria panicea.BMC ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Serotonin signaling regulates actomyosin contractility during morphogenesis in evolutionarily divergent lineages.Nature communications · 2023Article
- High-energy X-ray micro-laminography to visualize microstructures in dense planar objects.Journal of synchrotron radiation · 2023Article
- Genome-centric view of the microbiome in a new deep-sea glass sponge speciesFrontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Microbiome of the freshwater sponge Ephydatia muelleri shares compositional and functional similarities with those of marine sponges.The ISME journal · 2022Article
- Diverse and complex developmental mechanisms of early Ediacaran embryo-like fossils from the Weng'an Biota, southwest China.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Impact of Chinese palaeontology on evolutionary research.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Comparative metabolomic analysis reveals shared and unique chemical interactions in sponge holobionts.Microbiome · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
An extraordinarily well preserved, 600-million-year (Myr)-old, three-dimensionally phosphatized fossil displaying multiple independent characters of modern adult sponges has been analyzed by SEM and synchrotron X-ray tomography. The fossilized animal (Eocyathispongia qiania gen. et sp. nov.) is slightly more than 1.2 mm wide and 1.1 mm tall, is composed of hundreds of thousands of cells, and has a gross structure consisting of three adjacent hollow tubes sharing a common base. The main tube is crowned with a large open funnel, and the others end in osculum-like openings to the exterior. The external surface is densely covered with flat tile-like cells closely resembling sponge pinacocytes, and this layer is punctuated with smaller pores. A dense patch of external structures that display the form of a lawn of sponge papillae has also survived. Within the main funnel, an area where features of the inner surface are preserved displays a regular pattern of uniform pits. Many of them are surrounded individually by distinct collars, mounted in a supporting reticulum. The possibility cannot be excluded that these pits are the remains of a field of choanocytes. The character set evinced by this specimen, ranging from general anatomy to cell type, uniquely indicates that this specimen is a fossil of probable poriferan affinity. So far, we have only this single specimen, and although its organized and complex cellular structure precludes any reasonable interpretation that its origin is abiogenic, confirmation that it is indeed a fossilized sponge will clearly require discovery of additional specimens.
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