云南东部寒武纪早期射齿动物的演化古生物学与个体生态学

射齿动物（即传统意义上的“奇虾动物”）是寒武纪海洋里的“明星”化石，其“寒武纪海洋霸主”的称号使它们长期以来备受关注。但近年的研究进展显示，射齿动物可能占据了寒武纪海洋生态系统中的多个生态位。此外，射齿动物奇特的身体特征表明它们可能是叶足动物——节肢动物之间的演化过渡环节，是研究节肢动物起源的关键类群。云南东部寒武系第二统保存有世界上种类最多的射齿动物，而且很多化石标本精美地保存了软躯体构造。本项目计划依托这些特异保存的化石标本，结合近年来现代生物学（如形态发生的细胞分化和基因调控过程、分子系统学等）的最新研究进展，从形态特征演化的角度对射齿动物开展系统的研究工作。重点通过系统分类学的厘定和关键形态特征的同源性比较，探索射齿动物与节肢动物的演化关系；并对射齿动物的取食构造（大抓肢、口器等）开展功能形态学研究，尝试复原不同射齿动物类群的个体生态习性，增强对寒武纪早期海洋生态系统复杂性的认识。

Radiodonta (anomalocaridids and their relatives) is one of the most iconic fossil groups from the Cambrian. They have been regarded as the largest predators in the Cambrian sea since the 1970s, but recent analysis on feeding structures, e.g. frontal appendages and gnathobase-like structures revealed that they had more diverse feeding strategies. Their segmented body and the paired, segmented frontal appendage imply an affinity with arthropods, although it is still in debating how these two groups are related. This proposal aims to investigate the radiodonts exceptionally preserved in Cambrian Series 2 in the eastern Yunnan province, such as those from Chengjiang biota, primarily on their systematic palaeontology and on their functional morphology of the feeding structures. Assessment on homologies of radiodont key features will be conducted in a framework that integrates advances in palaeontology and neontology, particularly those in the latter, such as the mechanism of morphgenesis, gene regulation of morphologic characters etc. It is expected to trace the evolutionary transition from radiodonts to the euarthropod clades, and to reveal their ecologic diversity and significance in the marine ecosystem of the early Cambrian world.