| MCMENAMIN, Mark A.S., Department of Earth and Environment, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075, mmcmenam@mtholyoke.edu. Convincingly specific homologies between Ediacarans and members of recognized animal phyla have remained elusive, thus casting a shadow of doubt over the animal affinity interpretation of Ediacaran phylogeny. Spriggina floundersi, for example, has been described as a tomopterid annelid, an arthropod, and a frondose vendobiont. Reanalysis of Spriggina demonstrates the presence of genal spines (comparable to those of fallotaspidoid and paradoxidid trilobites), a cephalic region homologous to the effaced cephalons of agraulid and skehanid trilobites, and a dual cephalic region (also seen in Parvancorina) that compares to the parts of a trilobite cephalon anterior and posterior of the facial suture. Spriggina is thus a trilobitoid ecdysozoan, a conclusion in accord with Sven Jorgen Birket-Smith’s inference of an arthropod affinity for Spriggina. This result is among the first confident phylogenetic linkages between an Ediacaran and a Cambrian animal, and thus helps to demonstra |
