Information: - A body plan (also written bodyplan), Bauplan (German plural Bauplane), or ground plan is "an assemblage of morphological features shared among many members of a phylum-level group". The vertebrate body plan is one of many: invertebrates consist of many phyla. - Algae (singular "alga" ) is an informal term for a large, diverse group of photosynthetic organisms which are not necessarily closely related, and is thus polyphyletic. Included organisms range from unicellular genera, such as "Chlorella" and the diatoms, to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelp, a large brown alga which may grow up to 50m in length. Most are aquatic and autotrophic and lack many of the distinct cell and tissue types, such as stomata, xylem, and phloem, which are found in land plants. The largest and most complex marine algae are called seaweeds, while the most complex freshwater forms are the Charophyta, a division of green algae which includes, for example, "Spirogyra" and the stoneworts. - The Cambrian Period (or ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 55.6 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 541 million years ago (mya) to the beginning of the Ordovician Period mya. Its subdivisions, and its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established (as Cambrian series) by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latinised form of "Cymru", the Welsh name for Wales, where Britain's Cambrian rocks are best exposed. The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of lagerstatte sedimentary deposits, sites of exceptional preservation where "soft" parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells. As a result, our understanding of the Cambrian biology surpasses that of some later periods. - The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the relatively short evolutionary event, beginning around in the Cambrian period, during which most major animal phyla appeared, as indicated by the fossil record. Lasting for about the next 2025 million years, it resulted in the divergence of most modern metazoan phyla. Additionally, the event was accompanied by major diversification of other organisms. Prior to the Cambrian explosion, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies. Over the following 70 to 80 million years, the rate of diversification accelerated by an order of magnitude and the diversity of life began to resemble that of today. Almost all the present phyla appeared during this period, with the exception of Bryozoa, which made its earliest known appearance later, in the Lower Ordovician. - Cambria is a name for Wales, being the Latinised form of the Welsh name for the country, "Cymru". The term was not in use during the Roman period (when Wales had not come into existence as a distinct entity). It emerged later, in the medieval period, after the Anglo-Saxon settlement of much of Britain led to a territorial distinction between the new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (which would become England) and the remaining Celtic British kingdoms (which would become Wales). Latin being the primary language of scholarship in Western Christendom, writers needed a term to refer to the Celtic British territory and coined Cambria based on the Welsh name for it. - The Ediacaran (formerly Vendian) biota consisted of enigmatic tubular and frond-shaped, mostly sessile organisms that lived during the Ediacaran Period (ca. 635542 Mya). Trace fossils of these organisms have been found worldwide, and represent the earliest known complex multicellular organisms. The Ediacaran biota radiated in an event called the Avalon explosion, , after the Earth had thawed from the Cryogenian period's extensive glaciation. The biota largely disappeared with the rapid increase in biodiversity known as the Cambrian explosion. Most of the currently existing body plans of animals first appeared in the fossil record of the Cambrian rather than the Ediacaran. For macroorganisms, the Cambrian biota appears to have completely replaced the organisms that dominated the Ediacaran fossil record, although relationships are still a matter of debate. - Thaumaptilon is a fossil from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale which some authors have compared to members of the Ediacaran biota , generally believed to have disappeared at the start of the Cambrian , 542 million years ago . It was up to 20 cm long , and attached itself to the sea floor with a holdfast . Leaf - shaped , Thaumaptilon had a central axis extending to its tip , with many '' ribs '' radiating from it , in a similar manner to the ribs of a leaf . these may have had canals connecting them to the axis . One side of its surface was covered in spots , which might have been zooids . Thaumaptilon is considered important due to its resemblance to some Ediacarans ; it was believed to be a relative of forms such as Charnia . Forms related to Charnia were once believed to be related to sea - pens ( pennatulacean cnidarians ) , although this hypothesis has been questioned based on several lines of evidence . The name Thaumaptilon derives from the Greek Thauma , '' wonderful '' , + ptilion , '' soft feather '' . - Biodiversity, a contraction of "biological diversity," generally refers to the variety and variability of life on Earth. One of the most widely used definitions defines it in terms of the variability within species, between species and between ecosystems. It is a measure of the variety of organisms present in different ecosystems. This can refer to genetic variation, ecosystem variation, or species variation (number of species) within an area, biome, or planet. Terrestrial biodiversity tends to be greater near the equator, which seems to be the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth. It is richest in the tropics. Marine biodiversity tends to be highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest and in the mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time, but will be likely to slow in the future. - Latin (Latin: ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. - Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea of the echinoderms (phylum Echinodermata). The name comes from the Greek word "krinon", "a lily", and "eidos", "form". They live in both shallow water and in depths as great as . Those crinoids which, in their adult form, are attached to the sea bottom by a stalk are commonly called sea lilies. The unstalked forms are called feather stars or comatulids. - A frond is a large, divided leaf. In both common usage and botanical nomenclature, the leaves of ferns are referred to as fronds and some botanists restrict the term to this group. Other botanists allow the term frond to also apply to the large leaves of cycads and palms (Arecaceae). "Frond" is commonly used to identify a large, compound leaf, but if the term is used botanically to refer to the leaves of ferns, it may be applied to smaller and undivided leaves. - Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia (also called Metazoa). The animal kingdom emerged as a basal clade within Apoikozoa as a sister of the choanoflagellates. Sponges are the most basal clade of animals. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs: they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance. - The Ordovician is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.2 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya. The Ordovician, named after the Celtic tribe of the Ordovices, was defined by Charles Lapworth in 1879 to resolve a dispute between followers of Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, who were placing the same rock beds in northern Wales into the Cambrian and Silurian periods, respectively. Lapworth, recognized that the fossil fauna in the disputed strata were different from those of either the Cambrian or the Silurian periods, and placed them in a period of their own. It received international sanction in 1960, when it was adopted as an official period of the Paleozoic Era by the International Geological Congress. - Seaweed refers to several species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. - Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in 2011 of 3,063,456 and has a total area of . Wales has over of coastline and is largely mountainous, with its higher peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon, its highest summit. The country lies within the north temperate zone and has a changeable, maritime climate. - A holdfast is a root-like structure that anchors aquatic sessile organisms, such as seaweed, other sessile algae, stalked crinoids, benthic cnidarians, and sponges, to the substrate. - Vendia is a genus of oval-shaped, Ediacaran fossils ranging from 4.5 to 12.5mm long. The body is completely segmented into isomers, which are arranged alternately in two rows longitudinal to the axis of the body. The larger isomers cover the smaller ones externally but the posterior ends of all the isomers remain free. The transverse elements decrease in size from anterior to posterior and are all inclined in the same direction. - Sponges are the basalmost clade of animals of the phylum Porifera (meaning "pore bearer". They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through them, consisting of jelly-like mesohyl sandwiched between two thin layers of cells. Sponges have unspecialized cells that can transform into other types and that often migrate between the main cell layers and the mesohyl in the process. Sponges do not have nervous, digestive or circulatory systems. Instead, most rely on maintaining a constant water flow through their bodies to obtain food and oxygen and to remove wastes. Overview. Sponges are similar to other animals in that they are multicellular, heterotrophic, lack cell walls and produce sperm cells. Unlike other animals, they lack true tissues and organs, and have no body symmetry. The shapes of their bodies are adapted for maximal efficiency of water flow through the central cavity, where it deposits nutrients, and leaves through a hole called the osculum. Many sponges have internal skeletons of spongin and/or spicules of calcium carbonate or silicon dioxide. All sponges are sessile aquatic animals. Although there are freshwater species, the great majority are marine (salt water) species, ranging from tidal zones to depths exceeding . What is the relationship between 'thaumaptilon' and 'genus'?
taxon rank