| 释义 |
Ediacaran, a. and n. Palaeontol.
Brit. |ɛdɪˈakərən|, |ˌɛdɪəˈkɑːrən|, U.S. |ˌɛdiˈækərən|, |ˌɛdiəˈkɛrən|
[‹ Ediacara n. + -an suffix.]
A. adj. Of, relating to, or designating the Ediacara fauna (cf. Ediacara n.).
1961Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 47 1706 The most likely record, the diversified Ediacaran fauna of South Australia, is at its oldest very late Precambrian and may well be Early Cambrian. 1979D. Attenborough Life on Earth (1981) ii. 53 The change [sc. segmentation] must have taken place long before Ediacaran times for when those rocks were deposited the fundamental invertebrate divisions were already established. 1991Sci. Amer. Oct. 44/1 The appearance of the Ediacaran fauna signals not so much the attainment of multicellularity..but the attainment of macroscopic size in animals. 2000Jrnl. Paleontol. 74 349 These fossils occur directly below Lower Cambrian trace fossils..and confirm the persistence of the Ediacaran biota to near the base of the Cambrian.
B. n.
1. With the. The Ediacaran deposits; the period in which these deposits were laid down.
1966Science 11 Nov. 769/3 The very early metazoan fauna represented by elements of the Ediacaran of South Australia..may also be present in the middle Deep Spring beds of the southwestern Great Basin. 1987Nature 14 May 140/1 Free-floating organisms such as ‘jellyfish’, common both today and in the Ediacaran, show a much broader distribution even at the specific level. 1989C. Wills Wisdom of Genes viii. 215 During this Precambrian time, now commonly called the Ediacaran, and the Cambrian period that immediately followed it, all the phyla of animals evolved.
2. An Ediacaran organism.
1995Science 26 May 1207/1 Only Conway Morris makes use of current molecular phylogenies in attempting to interpret the Ediacarans. 1999T. Pratchett et al. Sci. of Discworld xxiv. 176 We have no idea whether the Ediacarans were our distant ancestors, or whether they were a dead end, a lifestyle doomed to failure. |