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SUMMARY:Small carbonaceous fossils (SCFs): early animals under the microsc
 ope - Dr Tom Harvey\, University of Leicester
DTSTART:20200210T180000Z
DTEND:20200210T190000Z
UID:TALK134704@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Natalie Forrest
DESCRIPTION:Ediacaran and Cambrian fossils provide direct evidence of earl
 y animal evolution\, which is lucky because we couldn’t have predicted w
 hat we see. Researchers flock to the spectacular macrofossil assemblages a
 t Mistaken Point\, the Burgess Shale and Chengjiang (and with good reason!
 ). But a powerful complementary dataset is emerging from “small carbonac
 eous fossils” (SCFs)\, which can be extracted from mudstones using caref
 ul acid-maceration\, revealing exquisite preservation of animal cuticles\,
  in particular. Rarely\, the whole animal is preserved\, as in recently di
 scovered meiofaunal loriciferans from the upper Cambrian\, just a third of
  a millimetre long. More commonly\, the animals are in bits – but even f
 ragmentary jaws\, scalids and setae can re-write the history of arthropods
 \, priapulids and annelids. SCFs help us to fill in the blanks between mac
 rofossil Lagerstätten\, but so far we have not uncovered a cryptic record
  of pre-Cambrian animals. Instead\, we see more evidence for animal disrup
 tion of a microbial biosphere around the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition.
LOCATION: Harker 1\, Department of Earth Sciences\, Downing Street
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