| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 分子與細胞生物研究所 === 94 === Weng’an biota found in Doushantou formation in Weng’an, Guizhou Province, south China possesses perfectly preserved fossil records. The Weng’an biota is different from others in that they are phosphatized and soft-bodied fossils. This research tries to confer how the environmental conditions lead to the phosphatized fossils.
In my experiments, I use the anemone, as my material. My major topic is how the calcium phosphates preserve the details of the cell structure by infiltrating into the cells first and following mineralize on the structure inside the cells with environmentally conditional variations.
Two approaches were reported in experimental simulations of calcium phosphates mineralization of soft-bodied fossils. In previous studies, most of the results emphasized the role of microorganism-induced mineralization of calcium phosphate, a taphonomic process known as authigenic mineralization. In their results, the calcium phosphates only mineralized outside the cells but never found inside the cells. The other taphonomic process is called permineralization that the calcium phosphates enter cells by chemical infiltrating and following mineralize the cell organelles, such as nucleus and chloroplasts to preserve the details of the cell structure. In our process, we conducted the study in sterilized condition to simulate the second hypothesis. As a result, we observe huge amount of calcium phosphates deposit inside the cells in our experiments, which is different from previous studies. Based on the results, we think that permineralization is the favored mechanism for calcium phosphates to mineralize on the structure inside the cells.
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