Oct. 24-26, 2009, Yingjie Overseas Exchange Center, Peking University, Beijing, China中文版

The earliest arthropods and other animals

Jan Bergstrom

Swedish Museum of Nature History, Sweden

Abstract

The swift radiation in the Cambrian resulted in a multitude of new life-styles and functional adaptations, hinted at by a multitude of new morphologies. Some worm groups do not seem to have evolved much since, but there are worm and filter-feeder groups representing experiments that have since become extinct. Evolution in arthropods and related groups started on a level without tagmosis and specializations in body and limbs and resulted in a first evolutionary “bush” with many adaptational solutions that look alien to us. The major groups of today are represented by a few crustaceans and chelicerates. Among the Cambrian arthropods relatives, anomalocaridids and other dinocaridids are well-known from more or less fantastic interpretations and reconstructions, but among the least understood because of the fragmentary and compacted state of most fossils. Based on controversial interpretations, they are often thought to be ancestral to more conventional arthropods. Alternatively they may be an intriguing parallel experiment in forming segmented animals with exoskeleton.

Jan Bergstrom

Swedish Museum of Nature History, Sweden

Biography

Born in Halmstad 1938. Studies from 1958 at Lund University including botany, zoology, geography and geosciences including palaeontology. PhD degree 1973, thesis on trilobites. Teaching responsibilities c. 1961-1978. State geologist and Senior state geologist at the Geological Survey of Sweden 1978-1989. Professor in Palaeozoology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, 1989-2005. Publications on Cambrian to Silurian and Mesozoic geology and palaeontology, with focus lately on arthropods and evolution in the Cambrian. Married to geomorphologist professor Karna Lidmar-Bergstrom from 1966; two children, born in 1968 and 1975.