Sustained shift in the morphology of organic-walled microfossils over the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition

The early (~1650 – 540 mya) history of eukaryotes was punctuated by several major – but enigmatic – environmental perturbations that potentially influenced the evolution of the Proterozoic biosphere, and the changing structure of Earth systems leading up to the Cambrian Explosion of animals. Reconstructing the manner in which eukaryotes responded to these events represents an innovative lens with which to understand what these perturbations actually represent, as well as the links between geosphere and biosphere during a critical period in eukaryotic evolution. In this study, we analyze organic-walled microfossil size and morphology across the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition. We illustrate that the decrease in vesicle diameter –previously shown to occur across the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition – began in the Ediacaran following the ‘Shuram’ carbon isotope excursion. This size decrease was accompanied by an increase in relative process length across the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition, which..., , , # Data from: Sustained shift in the morphology of organic-walled microfossils over the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.zs7h44jjn](10.5061/dryad.zs7h44jjn)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset was compiled from morphological data from 33 publications that included systematic descriptions of Ediacaran-Cambrian acritarch assemblages. Vesicle size, process length, and host lithology were recorded and taxa were scored for two continuous characters and 23 presence/absence characters largely focused on process morphology. We used R to create boxplots for acritarch size and visualize acritarch morphospace with nonmetric multidimensional scaling. We ran sensitivity tests using various subsampling analyses. Empty cells reflect values not applicable or published (such as process length or number of specimens reported, see below). 

### Files and variables

#### File: NMDS\_code.R

**Description:** This is code used to create and analyze the morpho...,