Margaretia is a frondose organism known from the middle Cambrian Burgess shale and the Kinzers Formation of Pennsylvania.[1] Its fronds reached about 10 cm in length and are peppered with a range of length-parallel oval holes. It was originally interpreted as an alcyonarian coral.[2] It was later reclassified as a green alga closely resembling modern Caulerpa by D.F. Satterthwait in her Ph.D. thesis in 1976,[3] a finding supported by Conway Morris and Robison in 1988.[2] More recently, it has been treated as an organic tube, that is used as nest of hemichordate Oesia.[4]
| Margaretia Temporal range:
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| Reconstruction of M. dorus as organic tube that is associated with Oesia disjuncta | |
Scientific classification 
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| Kingdom: | incertae sedis |
| Genus: | †Margaretia Walcott, 1931 |
| Species: | †M. dorus
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| Binomial name | |
| †Margaretia dorus Walcott, 1931
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References edit
- ^ Briggs, D. E. G.; Erwin, D. H.; Collier, F. J. (1995), Fossils of the Burgess Shale, Washington: Smithsonian Inst Press, ISBN 1-56098-659-X, OCLC 231793738
- ^ a b S.Conway Morris and R.A. Robison, "More soft-bodied Animals and Algae from the Middle Cambrian of Utah and British Columbia", University of Kansas Paleontological Contributions, Paper 122, pages 8-11, 1988. [1]
- ^ Donna Fields Satterthwait, Paleobiology and Paleoecology of Middle Cambrian Algae from Western North America, Ph.D. Thesis University of California at Los Angeles, 1976.
- ^ Nanglu, Karma; Caron, Jean-Bernard; Conway Morris, Simon; Cameron, Christopher B. (2016). "Cambrian suspension-feeding tubicolous hemichordates". BMC Biology. 14 (1): 56. doi:10.1186/s12915-016-0271-4. ISSN 1741-7007. PMC 4936055. PMID 27383414.
External links edit
- "Margaretia dorus". Burgess Shale Fossil Gallery. Virtual Museum of Canada. 2011. Archived from the original on 2020-11-12.
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