Embryonic and post-embryonic development of the Early Cambrian cnidarian Olivooides

Phosphatized specimens of Olivooides from the Early Cambrian of Shaanxi, China, represent a number of developmental stages. These include cleavage, gastrulation, organogenesis, cuticularization, pre-hatching, post-hatching and subsequent growth. This allows the reconstruction of a nearly full developmental sequence of this animal. Olivooides had large (600-870 μm in diameter), sphaerical eggs, indicating a high yolk content. Development was direct. Thus adult characters were forming already in the embryo, and there was no free larval stage. The embryonic development took place within a smooth protective membrane. Gastrulation probably was by polar ingression, and the blastopore appears to correspond to the aperture of the later stages. An embryonic cuticle formed which carried star-shaped structures, stellae, over the entire surface except for a radially folded non-stellate portion around the future aperture. At a later stage, the stellate cuticle was thrown into folds concentric with the aperture. This radially folded tissue then became more dominant. After hatching, the body assumed the shape of a strongly annulated cone, with the stellate cuticle forming the apical part and the folded cuticle forming a longitudinally striate cuticle around the aperture. Subsequent growth took place through the addition of striate tissue. A pentaradial symmetry of the body is suggested by lateral folds in the apical part. Olivooides is interpreted as a cnidarian, probably closely related to the scyphozoans. The conical test may have housed a polyp similar to the thecate polyps of modern coronate scyphozoans, but, unlike the latter, Olivooides had no visible attachment structures. There is no evidence for or against a free medusa stage. The prevalence of lecithotrophic direct developers in the Neoproterozoic and Cambrian, unless reflecting a preservational bias, casts some doubts on evolutionary models that assume larval planktotrophy to be primitive among metazoans.