IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v7y2016i1d10.1038_ncomms10320.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exceptional preservation of eye structure in arthropod visual predators from the Middle Jurassic

Author

Listed:
  • Jean Vannier

    (Université Lyon 1, UMR 5276 du CNRS, Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon: Terre, Planètes, Environnement, Bâtiment GEODE,)

  • Brigitte Schoenemann

    (Biocenter Cologne, Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne
    Institute of Biology Education (Zoology), University of Cologne)

  • Thomas Gillot

    (Université Lyon 1, UMR 5276 du CNRS, Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon: Terre, Planètes, Environnement, Bâtiment GEODE,
    Centre de Géosciences, MINES-ParisTech)

  • Sylvain Charbonnier

    (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Centre de Recherche sur la Paléobiodiversité et les Paléoenvironnements (CR2P, UMR 7207), Sorbonne Universités-MNHN, CNRS, UPMC-Paris6, Case postale 38)

  • Euan Clarkson

    (University of Edinburgh, School of Geosciences)

Abstract

Vision has revolutionized the way animals explore their environment and interact with each other and rapidly became a major driving force in animal evolution. However, direct evidence of how ancient animals could perceive their environment is extremely difficult to obtain because internal eye structures are almost never fossilized. Here, we reconstruct with unprecedented resolution the three-dimensional structure of the huge compound eye of a 160-million-year-old thylacocephalan arthropod from the La Voulte exceptional fossil biota in SE France. This arthropod had about 18,000 lenses on each eye, which is a record among extinct and extant arthropods and is surpassed only by modern dragonflies. Combined information about its eyes, internal organs and gut contents obtained by X-ray microtomography lead to the conclusion that this thylacocephalan arthropod was a visual hunter probably adapted to illuminated environments, thus contradicting the hypothesis that La Voulte was a deep-water environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean Vannier & Brigitte Schoenemann & Thomas Gillot & Sylvain Charbonnier & Euan Clarkson, 2016. "Exceptional preservation of eye structure in arthropod visual predators from the Middle Jurassic," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 1-9, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms10320
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10320
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10320
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms10320?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bo Dai & Liang Zhang & Chenglong Zhao & Hunter Bachman & Ryan Becker & John Mai & Ziao Jiao & Wei Li & Lulu Zheng & Xinjun Wan & Tony Jun Huang & Songlin Zhuang & Dawei Zhang, 2021. "Biomimetic apposition compound eye fabricated using microfluidic-assisted 3D printing," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-11, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms10320. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.