Xenusion
Type specimen of Xenusion auerswaldae in the Berlin Museum of Natural History
- Xenusion auerswaldae POMPECKJ, 1927
Xenusion is a genus of extinct molting animals ( Ecdysozoa ) from the early Cambrian period, about 530-521 mya. The two fossil specimens found so far are from the glacial boulders of northern Germany. They are considered the oldest evidence of an animal with limbs. The only type ( type species ) is X. auerswaldae.
Scientific classification
Initially, the findings could not be attributed to any known group of animals. Later they presented them to the living in the geological epoch of the Cambrian Lobopoden ( Lobopodia, Protarthropoda ) that are related probably closely with today's Stummelfüßern ( Onychophora ). However, recent forms of Onychophora live on land. The fossils of Xenusion probably originate from the frühkambrischen marine deposits ( Kalmar - sandstone) that are pending in Kalmar in Sweden.
Related forms (eg Hallucigenia ) were detected in the fossil fauna of the Canadian Burgess Shale, a world-famous fossil site. As Microdictyon called thorn -like Skelettelelemente the Small Shelly Fauna could also be assigned to a Onychophoren -like fossil from the Lower Cambrian of China ( Chengjiang fauna).
Fund history
The first specimen ( holotype ) scientifically described was Fritz Knuth the trenches of his garden in Sewerby ( today part of Wittstock / Dosse) in Prignitz. He handed it to Anne Marie von Auerswald, director of the " local history museum for the Prignitz " in the monastery pen to the Holy Sepulchre. She handed it to the scientific treatment to Professor Josef Felix POMPECKJ, Director of the Geological- Palaeontological Institute and Museum of the Friedrich- Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University of Berlin ), continue. This is about the most significant paleontological discovery in the Prignitz. The first record is now in the Berlin Museum of Natural History.
Another copy of the Xenusion auerswaldae 1978 found by Helga and Horst dike foot on the island Hiddensee and is in the collections of Geosciences, Martin -Luther- University Halle- Wittenberg, Institute of Geosciences.