The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event: Insights from the Tafilalt Biota, Morocco

About 40 million years after the Cambrian Explosion, the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) represents a second and dramatic burst in marine biodiversity, with major changes in the structure of ecosystems and the progressive replacement of the distinctive Cambrian Evolutionary Fauna by the Paleozoic Evolutionary Fauna. However, the GOBE is not a single, worldwide, short-term event, but rather the complex sum of successive diversifications occurring in distinct taxonomic groups, trophic guilds and regions. This book focuses on the Late Ordovician Tafilalt Biota, Anti-Atlas Morocco, which provides a snapshot of the GOBE in high-latitude regions of the Southern Hemisphere. A series of contributions explore different aspects of the Tafilalt Biota, including its geological setting, the international fossil trade in this area and a series of detailed systematic contributions describing many new taxa of marine invertebrates. This volume represents a significant contribution to the understanding of the Tafilalt Biota and its significance to the GOBE.
Hexedriocystis, an aberrant echinoderm from the Upper Ordovician of Morocco
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Published:May 24, 2022
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CiteCitation
Samuel Zamora, Colin D. Sumrall, 2022. "Hexedriocystis, an aberrant echinoderm from the Upper Ordovician of Morocco", The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event: Insights from the Tafilalt Biota, Morocco, A. W. Hunter, J. J. Álvaro, B. Lefebvre, P. Van Roy, S. Zamora
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Abstract
Hexedriocystis is a very unusual echinoderm with a puzzling combination of morphological features. The two described species H. inexpectatus and H. mimus occur in Upper Ordovician siliciclastic rocks from Morocco, North Africa. They show a striking combination of isorophid edrioasteroid, paedomorphic crinoid and blastozoan characteristics including a domed thecal shape with a peripheral rim-like attachment structure, imbricate thecal plates. However, both species developed feeding appendages covered by large peristomial cover plates and six oral plates. Hexedriocystis lived intimately associated with edrioasteroid colonies and its strange morphology is probably the result of convergence with isorophid edrioasteroid.