Word: phylum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...many of these animals seem. For it was during the Cambrian (and perhaps only during the Cambrian) that nature invented the animal body plans that define the broad biological groupings known as phyla, which encompass everything from classes and orders to families, genera and species. For example, the chordate phylum includes mammals, birds and fish. The class Mammalia, in turn, covers the primate order, the hominid family, the genus Homo and our own species, Homo sapiens...
...paleontologist Bruce Runnegar, however, disagrees with Seilacher. Runnegar argues that the fossil known as Ernietta, which resembles a pouch made of wide-wale corduroy, may be some sort of seaweed that generated food through photosynthesis. Charniodiscus, a frond with a disklike base, he classifies as a colonial cnidarian, the phylum that includes jellyfish, sea anemones and sea pens. And Dickinsonia, which appears to have a clearly segmented body, Runnegar tentatively places in an ancestral group that later gave rise to roundworms and arthropods. The Cambrian explosion did not erupt out of the blue, argues Runnegar. "It's the continuation...
Then of course there is the phylum Pre-Greedicus, which is comprised of two classes: Pre-Lawicus and Pre-Biznicus. When you talk to members of this phylum, your conversation with them, not too unlike your conversations with many Harvard students, will often sound something like this...
Saying goodbye to members of the phylum Pre-Greedicus can be similarly rewarding. Pre-Greedicus are usually the ones to initiate the departure, and they can do so with varying degrees of abruptness and skill. Here are just a few prototypical goodbyes...
Them, of course, there's the phylum Pre-Journalistic. You can identify members of this phylum by their proclivity to use words like "proclivity" and make obnoxious observations about the world around them, in the vain hope that someone will find them amusing...