3.4. Our Spineless Friends: The Invertebrates

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Emergence of Life

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Emergence of Life

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How did life emerge on Earth? How have life and Earth co-evolved through geological time? Is life elsewhere in the universe? Take a look through the 4-billion-year history of life on Earth through the lens of the modern Tree of Life! This course will evaluate the entire history of life on Earth within the context of our cutting-edge understanding of the Tree of Life. This includes the pioneering work of Professor Carl Woese on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus which revolutionized our understanding with a new "Tree of Life." Other themes include: -Reconnaissance of ancient primordial life before the first cell evolved -The entire ~4-billion-year development of single- and multi-celled life through the lens of the Tree of Life -The influence of Earth system processes (meteor impacts, volcanoes, ice sheets) on shaping and structuring the Tree of Life This synthesis emphasizes the universality of the emergence of life as a prelude for the search for extraterrestrial life.

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Week 3 - Fossilization and Precambrian Life-Earth Interaction

This week, you'll explore how scientists interpret ancient fossilized life, which yields remarkably detailed and complete reconstructions of the lifestyles of ancient organisms that have been deceased for hundreds, thousands, millions, and even billions of years. These reconstructions provide valuable information regarding the evolutionary success of organism morphology and lifestyle.

3.1. DCSI: Dino Crime Scene Investigators11:57

3.2. Ancient Forensic Science: Fossilization12:30

3.3. Getting Old and Well-Preserved: Modes of Preservation9:48

3.4. Our Spineless Friends: The Invertebrates6:03

3.5. Lifestyles of the Rich and Fossilized6:58

3.6. Trying to Make a Living: Fossil Feeding Modes6:36

3.7. The Great Experiment of the Ediacaran Fauna7:50

Conheça os instrutores

Bruce W. Fouke, Ph.D.
Director of the Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center
Department of Geology, Department of Microbiology, and Institute for Genomic Biology

[MUSIC]

I'd like to discuss invertebrates today and an introduction to symmetry and

thinking about those organisms.

What is an invertebrate?

So the definition of an invertebrate is that it doesn't have a backbone or

a spine.

So that actually is kind of an overarching term that includes all organisms except

those that belong the Vertebrata which is a sub-phylum of the phylum Chordata.

So when we think about invertebrates, we wana start to describe those organisms, or

those specimens, or those fossils that we find in our backyard, and

try to deduce how that organism lived.

And so, invertebrates can be wildly intricate, or

they can be fairly simple, if I'm not being too [LAUGH],

I don't want to insult those invertebrates, being too simple.

So, we want to start to deduce the type of environment that those organisms lived and

how they lived, actually.

And we can get a lot of information from just a simple little fossil and

considering the symmetry of it, and we can start to think about how it moved.

So let's discuss symmetry for just a moment here.

So the first thing you might notice about a specimen that you pick up, or

a dead organism that you find, or a fossil, is the general shape.

And so one of the descriptors of that shape is symmetry.

And so what symmetry is, is a recognition of some type of organized structure that

maybe can be reflected, where different sides of the organism are the same.

For example, a human, you can tell if you split it down the middle, the right and

the left half are the same.

And so that's a type of symmetry.

And so the first type of symmetry is the lack of symmetry.

For example, a shell, the general overall shape is asymmetrical.

So you want to look at it on all sides and consider it.

And I come up with the fact that, yes, it's very organized in its structure,

it has this spiral shape, but the overall shape is asymmetrical.

I can't find a mirror plane here where two or more sides are the same, so

that's asymmetry, the lack of symmetry.

Another type of symmetry is called radial symmetry and

that's where, the tight definition of radial

symmetry is where you almost have an infinite number of mirror planes.

You could cut that organism in any direction and

those pieces will be the same.

So if you think of a pizza, right, if you cut that pizza down the middle,

across the side, all the pieces look the same.

You can turn it around, you can fold it in half, and

all those folds are going to be represented equally on both sides.

So a more specific form of radial symmetry is called pentameral symmetry.

So pent or penta, that refers to the number five.

And so pentameral symmetry, for

example, is a type of radial symmetry where there are five equal pieces.

And so if I'm counting the pieces on this specimen, and actually,

the back kind of gives it away, [LAUGH] you can actually count five

areas that are the exact same as the one that's next to them, or mostly.

So if you can look at a crinoid, for example,

we'll talk about those eventually, or in a echinoderm here, you might say,

hey, I notice five structures on here.

And it's not only just the markings, but

you could start to split this organism into five equal pieces and

that's pentamorally radially symmetrical organism.

So pentamoral symmetry.

So the last type of symmetry we would say, as humans,

is the most sophisticated type of symmetry is bilaterally symmetrical organisms.

And so bi is two, and so bilaterally symmetrical organisms have a plane in some

direction that you can cut it, where those halves are mirror images of each other.

So again, as I said, humans, if you cut them down the center here, kind of

sagittally down the middle, the two, right and left sides should be mirror images.

A more ancient organism is this ammonoid here, and

maybe on the top here, on one plane that you would consider,

it doesn't look symmetrical, it looks, again, this spiral shape.

But if you turn it all around and you look at it kind of head on, you can see,

actually, the right and left sides, you could take those pieces apart and

they would look the same, they would be symmetrical.

So I can identify two sides and that's bilateral symmetry.

Another example is this cephalopod, it's a squid or a cuttlefish.

And again, if you kind of look at it from the top,

the tentacles look radially symmetrical so the soft parts are radially symmetrical.

Maybe it has six, I should count them, but six or ten,

or all those scary tentacles, and they're radially symmetrical around the mouth.

But if you look at the hard parts, I could actually cut this organism

down the center, in this case, and find that those two sides are the same.

So, again, that's bilaterally symmetrical.

Lastly, I wanted to show you this one because you'll be seeing it over and over.

It's an important fossil.

This is a brachiopod.

The tricky thing about brachiopods is basically it has two shells,

so it's a bivalve.

And you would think that, well, that top and

bottom should be the same, shouldn't they?

You should have this plane across the center where those two shells meet,

the plane of commissure.

But actually with brachiopods, that's not the case.

If you can see, it actually kind of has this wave motion

if you look at it head on at that plane of commissure where those two shells meet.

But if you think a little bit differently and try to cut it a different way,

actually, if you go down the center, perpendicular to the plane of commissure,

we see that the right and left sides are the same.

So, that is another bilaterally symmetrical organism.

It was a little tricky.

[MUSIC]

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