Elucidating the morphology and ecology of Eoandromeda octobrachiata from the Ediacaran of South Australia

Eoandromeda octobrachiata is a poorly understood Ediacaran organism, with spiral-octoradial arms, found in South Australia and South China. The informal Nilpena member of the Rawnsley Quartzite, Flinders Ranges in South Australia preserves more than 200 specimens of Eoandromeda. Here we use the novel application of rotational geometric morphometrics together with palaeoenvironmental information to provide a better insight into their palaeobiology and ecology and to address conflicting hypotheses regarding mode of life and taxonomic affinity. We find that Eoandromeda likely had a radially symmetrical shape in life, was cone-shaped and had a high relief off the microbial mat. Analysis of the symmetric and asymmetric shape components revealed they deform strongly in the direction of palaeocurrent, therefore are thought to be made of a flexible material. Almost all specimens are compressed flat. Specimens that appear to have not fully collapsed support the idea that Eoandromeda was likely c..., Three-dimensional (3D) surfaces of these specimens were captured using the HDI Compact C506 and 3Shape TROIS 4 Intraoral 3D laser scanners (accuracies reported to 12µm and c.5µm respectively). Scans were prepared using the FlexScan3D and TRIOS Design Studio software (correspondingly) and processed (landmarked/measured) in the MeshLab software (Cignoni et al. 2008)., R and excel required to view and process the files., # Elucidating the morphology and ecology of Eoandromeda octobrachiata from the Ediacaran of South Australia

Tory L. Botha: Principal investigator, University of Adelaide, ORCiD: 0000-0002-2519-9365

Description of files and data:

coEo:
Text file dictating how the landmarks are rotated and relabeled

SymmetryFunctions:
R Function written by Savriama (Frontier in Plant Science, 2018) that rotates and relabels the specimens

R code:
R Code for analysis of Eoandromeda

Collections_7armlmk:
* .tps file containing the standardised landmarks for collection specimens that were landmarked
* Three columns present in the files representing X, Y, Z coordinates of the landmarks

Eo + Float_7armlmk:
* .tps file containing the standardised landmarks for LV-Eo Bed + Float specimens that were landmarked
* Three columns present in the files representing X, Y, Z coordinates of the landmarks

Parv Bed_7armlmk:
* .tps file containing the standardised landmarks for WS-Parv Bed specimens that were landmarke...