New Siliceous Microfossils from the Terreneuvian Yanjiahe Formation, South China: The Possible Earliest Radiolarian Fossil Record

Abstract

Radiolarians form an important part of the planktonic realm in the ocean of Early Paleozoic, but their origin and evolutionary processes has long been enigmatic. The ancestral representatives of radiolarians have been considered to belong to the order Archaeospicularia, whose unquestionable fossil records were dated back to the Middle Cambrian. Here we report ?Blastulospongia and unnamed spherical radiolarians in the Terreneuvian from the Yanjiahe Formation in Hubei Province, South China. Blastulospongia is an enigmatic siliceous microfossil genus, with affinities proposed amongst the radiolarian, sphinctozoan-grade sponges and uncertain protists. As for the newly discovered unnamed radiolarians, morphologically they possess latticed shell, spherical shape and are all small in size. Our discoveries support the idea that spherical radiolarians is an ancient representative, whose origin and diversification was probably much earlier than generally accepted. The hypothesis that the oldest radiolarians belong to the order Archaeospicularia needs to be re-examined.