Acritarchs
| Acritarchs | |
|---|---|
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| A supposed Ediacaran embryo contained within an acritarch from the Doushantuo formation | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | incertae sedis |
| (unranked): |
Acritarcha Evitt, 1963 |
| Synonyms | |
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Acritarchs are organic microfossils, present from approximately 1,400 to 3,200 million years ago to the present. Their diversity reflects major ecological events such as the appearance of predation and the Cambrian explosion.
In general, any small, non-acid soluble (i.e. non-carbonate, non-siliceous) organic structure that can not otherwise be accounted for is classified as an acritarch.
Acritarchs include the remains of a wide range of quite different kinds of organisms - ranging from the egg cases of small metazoans to resting cysts of many different kinds of chlorophyta (green algae). It is likely that some acritarch species represent the resting stages (cysts) of algae that were ancestral to the dinoflagellates. The nature of the organisms associated with older acritarchs is generally not well understood, though many are probably related to unicellular marine algae. In theory, when the biological source (taxon) of an acritarch does become known, that particular microfossil is removed from the acritarchs and classified with its proper group.
While the classification of acritarchs into form genera is entirely artificial, it is not without merit, as the form taxa show traits similar to those of genuine taxa - for example an 'explosion' in the Cambrian and a mass extinction at the end of the Permian.
Acritarchs were most likely eukaryotes. While archaea and bacteria usually produce simple fossils of a very small size, eukaryotic unicellular fossils are more complex, with external morphological projections and ornamentation such as spines and hairs that only eukaryotes can produce; as most acritarchs have external projections (e.g., hair, spines, thick cell membranes, etc.), they are predominantly eukaryotes, although simple eukaryote acritarchs also exist.
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