Word: runnegar
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UCLA 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...
...debate between Runnegar and Seilacher is about to get even more heated. For, as pictures that accompany the Science article reveal, researchers have returned from Namibia with hard evidence that a diverse community of organisms flourished in the oceans at the end of the Vendian, just before nature was gripped by creative frenzy. Runnegar, for instance, is currently studying the fossil of a puzzling conical creature that appears to be an early sponge. M.I.T.'s Beverly Saylor is sorting through sandstones that contain a menagerie of small, shelly things, some shaped like wine goblets, others like miniature curtain rods...
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