A late-Ediacaran crown-group sponge animal

Xiaopeng Wang, Alexander G. Liu, Zhe Chen, Chengxi Wu, Yarong Liu, Bin Wan (), Ke Pang, Chuanming Zhou, Xunlai Yuan () and Shuhai Xiao ()
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Xiaopeng Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Alexander G. Liu: University of Cambridge
Zhe Chen: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chengxi Wu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yarong Liu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Bin Wan: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Ke Pang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chuanming Zhou: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xunlai Yuan: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shuhai Xiao: Virginia Tech

Nature, 2024, vol. 630, issue 8018, 905-911

Abstract: Abstract Sponges are the most basal metazoan phylum1 and may have played important roles in modulating the redox architecture of Neoproterozoic oceans2. Although molecular clocks predict that sponges diverged in the Neoproterozoic era3,4, their fossils have not been unequivocally demonstrated before the Cambrian period5–8, possibly because Precambrian sponges were aspiculate and non-biomineralized9. Here we describe a late-Ediacaran fossil, Helicolocellus cantori gen. et sp. nov., from the Dengying Formation (around 551–539 million years ago) of South China. This fossil is reconstructed as a large, stemmed benthic organism with a goblet-shaped body more than 0.4 m in height, with a body wall consisting of at least three orders of nested grids defined by quadrate fields, resembling a Cantor dust fractal pattern. The resulting lattice is interpreted as an organic skeleton comprising orthogonally arranged cruciform elements, architecturally similar to some hexactinellid sponges, although the latter are built with biomineralized spicules. A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis resolves H. cantori as a crown-group sponge related to the Hexactinellida. H. cantori confirms that sponges diverged and existed in the Precambrian as non-biomineralizing animals with an organic skeleton. Considering that siliceous biomineralization may have evolved independently among sponge classes10–13, we question the validity of biomineralized spicules as a necessary criterion for the identification of Precambrian sponge fossils.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07520-y

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