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Calcification in the Cnidaria Through Time: An Overview of Their Skeletal Patterns from Individual to Evolutionary Viewpoints

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The Cnidaria, Past, Present and Future

Abstract

Compared to the several hundreds of Families recognized among the Cnidaria phylum, the number of taxa in which a biomineralization process has been developed appears rather restricted. However an in-depth understanding of the resulting hard-parts is of major importance with respect to both evolutionary history of some major components of the phylum and contribution to a general model of calcium carbonate mineralization among living organisms. Results of a top-down approach involving recent physical characterization methods are summarized, emphasizing the remarkable and somewhat paradoxical aspects of this biochemically driven crystallization process.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paléontologie, 8 rue Buffon, 75005, Paris, France

    Jean-Pierre Cuif

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  1. Jean-Pierre Cuif
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Correspondence to Jean-Pierre Cuif .

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  1. Biological, Geological and Env Scie, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Stefano Goffredo

  2. Fac. Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

    Zvy Dubinsky

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Cuif, JP. (2016). Calcification in the Cnidaria Through Time: An Overview of Their Skeletal Patterns from Individual to Evolutionary Viewpoints. In: Goffredo, S., Dubinsky, Z. (eds) The Cnidaria, Past, Present and Future. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31305-4_11

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