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Palaeontology

Ancient worms in armour

Nature volume 451, pages 133–134 (2008)Cite this article

It requires a quirk of fossilization for the soft parts of an animal to be preserved. Study of such a specimen of the mysterious machaeridians provides these organisms with a well defined evolutionary home.

A 480-million-year-old fossil from Morocco, described by Vinther et al. on page 185 of this issue1, ends a long controversy over a group of enigmatic fossils called the machaeridians. Now convincingly interpreted as primitive segmented (annelid) worms, the extinct machaeridians had a scaly 'armour' of mineralized shell plates over or around a soft body of previously unknown form. This armour represents an adaptation not seen in modern segmented worms, and raises a host of questions about the group's evolution and origins.

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Figure 1: The machaeridians.
Figure 2: Machaeridians in evolutionary context.

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  1. Jean-Bernard Caron is in the Department of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C6, Canada. jcaron@rom.on.ca

    Jean-Bernard Caron

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  1. Jean-Bernard Caron
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Caron, JB. Ancient worms in armour. Nature 451, 133–134 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/451133a

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