A comprehensive review of cnidarian fossils during Ediacaran to Cambrian Miaolingian

Cnidaria is an invertebrate clade characteristic of cnidocyte living in the sea and freshwater around the world. Cnidarians play a key role in the origin and evolution of metazoan because of its earliest derived from metazoans. They provide an important clue in early evolutionary, phylogeny, stratigraphic correlation and paleoenvironment of metazoans. This paper gives a brief comprehensive review in early cnidarians fossil records during the Ediaracan to Middle Cambrian (Miaolingian) and divides four periods of early cnidarian evolution: Precambrian, Cambrian Terreneuvian, Cambrian series 2, and Cambrian Miaolin-gian. We have discussed these four periods and the current research shows that: 1) Although the Precambrian cnidarian fossil record is relatively abundant, most of them existing are full of controversy. There is no reliable fossil record of cnidarians; 2) many cnidarian embryos and developmental sequences preserved in the Cambrian Terreneuvian, such as Kuanchuanpu biota, which is an important window to study the evolution of cnidarians; 3) Burgess shale-type Lagerst?tte like Chengjiang Biota of the Cambrian series 2 exists soft-body characters of cnidarians. Meanwhile, the earliest coral fossil record appeared in this period; 4) the Cambrian Miaolingian fossil records of cnidarians were mainly preserved as Burgess shale-type Lagerst?tte (such as the Burgess shale biota and Kaili biota). Another place in Utah, USA in this period found credible cnidarian impres-sion fossil indicates that almost all cnidarian taxa have appeared during the Miaolingian. Based on the research in the above periods, we propose some suggestions and discussions on the further research of the early cnidarian fossils.

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