Oral Region Homologies in Paleozoic Crinoids and Other Plesiomorphic Pentaradial Echinoderms

The phylogenetic relationships between major groups of plesiomorphic pentaradial echinoderms, the Paleozoic crinoids, blastozoans, and edrioasteroids, are poorly understood because of a lack of widely recognized homologies. Here, we present newly recognized oral region homologies, based on the Universal Elemental Homology model for skeletal plates, in a wide range of fossil taxa. The oral region of echinoderms is mainly composed of the axial, or ambulacral, skeleton, which apparently evolved more slowly than the extraxial skeleton that forms the majority of the body. Recent phylogenetic hypotheses have focused on characters of the extraxial skeleton, which may have evolved too rapidly to preserve obvious homologies across all these groups. The axial skeleton conserved homologous suites of characters shared between various edrioasteroids and specific blastozoans, and between other blastozoans and crinoids. Although individual plates can be inferred as homologous, no directly overlapping suites of characters are shared between edrioasteroids and crinoids. Six different systems of mouth (peristome) plate organization (Peristomial Border Systems) are defined. These include four different systems based on the arrangement of the interradially-positioned oral plates and their peristomial cover plates, where PBS A1 occurs only in plesiomorphic edrioasteroids, PBS A2 occurs in plesiomorphic edrioasteroids and blastozoans, and PBS A3 and PBS A4 occur in blastozoans and crinoids. The other two systems have radially-positioned uniserial oral frame plates in construction of the mouth frame. PBS B1 has both orals and uniserial oral frame plates and occurs in edrioasterid and possibly edrioblastoid edrioasteroids, whereas PBS B2 has exclusively uniserial oral frame plates and is found in isorophid edrioasteroids and imbricate and gogiid blastozoans. These different types of mouth frame construction offer potential synapomorphies to aid in parsimony-based phylogenetics for exploring branching order among stem groups on the echinoderm tree of life

Perforocycloides nathalieae new genus and species, an unusual Silurian cyclocystoid (Echinodermata) from Anticosti Island, Québec, Canada

Cyclocystoids are a poorly known, rare, extinct class of bi-facially flattened, disc shaped echinoderms, ranging from the Middle Ordovician to the Early Carboniferous. Articulated cyclocystoids are relatively common in the Ordovician but are rarer in younger strata. Here we describe Perforocycloides nathaliae new genus and species, from the early Silurian of Anticosti Island, Québec, Canada, the first articulated cyclocystoid from the Silurian of North America. This taxon is distinguished from other cyclocystoids by the number of variably sized marginal ossicles, the lack of interseptal plates, and the novelty of pores located in the distal part of the sutures between adjacent marginals on the dorsal surface. These dorsal intermarginal sutural pores led to canals which penetrated the contiguous area of the lateral surface of the marginals and emerged on the ventral surface between the cupules of adjacent marginals. These dorsal intermarginal sutural pores/canals appear to be unique to Perforocycloides and whilst their function is speculative, they provided some form of communication between the dorsal disc and the distal side of the ventral marginals/cupules. Perforocycloides most closely resembles the Ordovician–Silurian genus Zygocycloides, suggesting that this genus may have diversified more widely during the Silurian than previously reported. A review of global Silurian cyclocystoid distribution suggests taxa were geographically confined and that greatest diversity appears to have been located within Baltica. However, it also demonstrates our current limited knowledge. No specimens have been recorded from Gondwana (e.g. Africa, Australia, South America), Siberia, and North and South China, nor are any specimens known confidently anywhere from Přidolí strata.This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made