The findings of preserved soft body parts including pedicle
in the linguloid brachiopods are extremely rare in the fossil
record of which the early Cambrian Chengjiang (southern
China) and Burgess Shale (British Columbia) faunas are the
most important. However, these characteristic Cambrian
soft−bodied faunas largely disappeared from the fossil re−
cord well before the end of the Cambrian. Here we describe
the first record of the pedicle in a linguloid brachiopod from
the post−Cambrian strata, preserved with remarkable fidel−
ity. Contrary to the Chengjiang and Burgess Shale−type fau−
nas which are commonly preserved as essentially two−di−
mensional aluminosilicate or degraded organic carbon films
or pyritized compressed fossils, the specimens now recov−
ered from the Ordovician of China show a three−dimen−
sional, pyritized pedicle with preserved external morphol−
ogy, in detail. The presence of streamlined shell shape and
burrowing shell sculpture in our specimens supports an as−
sumption for infaunal mode of life of the genus. Since all
linguloid brachiopods of the early Cambrian are inter−
preted as epifaunal or semi−infaunal, it seems that the here
described Ordovician linguloid is the oldest representative
of fully infaunal brachiopods. Apparently, the long vermi−
form and flexible linguloid pedicle has appeared as a func−
tionally optimized construction.
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