Furongian (Jiangshanian) occurrences of radiodonts in Poland and South China and the fossil record of the Hurdiidae.

The Furongian period represents an important gap in the fossil record of most groups of non-biomineralizing organisms, owing to a scarcity of Konservat-Lagerstätten of that age. The most significant of these deposits, the Jiangshanian strata of the Sandu Formation near Guole Township (Guangxi, South China), have yielded a moderately abundant, but taxonomically diverse soft-bodied fossil assemblage, which provides rare insights into the evolution of marine life at that time. In this contribution, we report the first discovery of a radiodont fossil from the Guole Konservat-Lagerstätte. The specimen is an incomplete frontal appendage of a possibly new representative of the family Hurdiidae. It is tentatively interpreted as composed of seven podomeres, six of which bearing laminiform endites. The best preserved of these endites is especially long, and it bears short auxiliary spines that greatly vary in size. This is the second occurrence of hurdiids and more generally radiodonts in the Furongian, the first being the external mould of an oral cone from Jiangshanian strata of the Wiśniówka Sandstone Formation in Poland. Restudy of this Polish specimen confirms that it belongs to a hurdiid radiodont and best compares to