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Geological Society, London, Special Publications; 2007; v. 286; p. 377-386;
DOI: 10.1144/SP286.27
© 2007 Geological Society of London

Functional morphology

Towards a morphospace for the Ediacara biota

J. B. Antcliffe & M. D. Brasier

Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PR, UK (e-mail: jonathan.antcliffe{at}univ.ox.ac.uk)

The Ediacara biota of the late Neoproterozoic is justly famous as a biological puzzle. Studies of Ediacaran biology have commonly used analogy with living organisms as a cipher for the decoding of biological affinity, and consequently the life mode and habit. Here, we discuss the problems of using such analogous reasoning and put forward our alternative approach, that of using Morphospace Analysis for the study of growth, form and phylogeny. This tool, we suggest, has the potential to be used for testing the unity of an evolutionary clade, such as ‘rangeomorphs’ and ‘dickinsoniomorphs’. Preliminary data from the members of the Ediacara biota do indeed show such a unity within our preliminary morphospace model (all k values are low). This method reveals no clear relationships, between these forms and more recent biological groups such as the sea pens or the Foraminifera.