Recent fossil discoveries from the lower Cambrian Emu Bay Shale (EBS) on Kangaroo
Island, South Australia, have provided critical insights into the tempo of the Cambrian …

The interrelationships and evolutionary history of molluscs have seen great advances in the
last decade. Recent phylogenetic studies have allowed alternative morphology‐based …

Background Despite the excellent fossil record of cephalopods, their early evolution is
poorly understood. Different, partly incompatible phylogenetic hypotheses have been …

The paper gives an overview of the modern hypotheses on the origin of the phylum Mollusca
and the formation of its main classes. The Cambrian stage of molluscan evolution is …

The stem‐group priapulid Ottoia Walcott, 1911, is the most abundant worm in the mid‐
Cambrian Burgess Shale, but has not been unambiguously demonstrated elsewhere. High …

The molecularly defined clade Ecdysozoa comprises the panarthropods (Euarthropoda,
Onychophora and Tardigrada) and the cycloneuralian worms (Nematoda, Nematomorpha …

The principal animal lineages (phyla) diverged in the Cambrian, but most diversity at lower
taxonomic ranks arose more gradually over the subsequent 500 Myr. Annelid worms seem …

In order to put the origin of the Ammonoidea into the broader evolutionary context, we review
the hypothesis on the origin of cephalopods in general, the origin of bactritids as well as the …

The soft‐bodied C ambrian organism W iwaxia poses a taxonomic conundrum. Its
imbricated dorsal scleritome suggests a relationship with the polychaete annelid worms …

Coleoid cephalopod phylogeny is well studied via both molecular and morphological data,
yet although some agreement has been reached (eg that extant Decapodiformes and …