Ontogeny of the Trilobite Redlichia (Pteroredlichia) chinensis (Walcott, 1905) from the Cambrian Balang Formation
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Abstract:
The Balang Formation is a fossiliferous unit and had a widely geographic distribution in eastern Guizhou, China. The Balang Fauna, which a Burgess Shale-type biota from the Cambrian Series 2 of Guizhou, yields in the middle and upper parts of the formation. The Balang Fauna consists of representatives of eight major groups, such as poriferans-chanceleoriids, sponge, cnidarians, priapulids, brachiopods, molluscs, arthropods, and echinoderms, except animals, including algae and trace fossils. Trilobites of arthropods is an important group. The trilobite sequence in the Balang Formation is continuous and preserved individuals of different ontogenetic stages, which provides important material for ontogenetic study of species–level from this group. Here, based on over 300 specimens, by methods of statistics, and combined evolutional characters of each stage, we mainly focus on the ontogenetic characters of Redlichia (Pteroredlichia) chinensis (Walcott, 1905), to describe characters of the protaspid, meraspid to holaspid periods of the species and analyze trends of their morphologic evolution. The new data enrich our understanding of ontogeny of R. (Pteroredlichia) chinensis and provide significant criteria for taxonomic identification.
