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Science 9 March 2001:
Vol. 291. no. 5510, pp. 1913 - 1914
DOI: 10.1126/science.1056632
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Perspectives

PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION:
The Origins of Modern Corals

George D. Stanley Jr. and Daphne G. Fautin

Modern corals play an important role in marine processes and the global carbon cycle because of their prodigious ability to form calcium carbonate deposits. In their Perspective, Stanley and Fautin discuss the controversy surrounding the evolution of modern corals. They suggest that lineages may have lost and reacquired skeletons repeatedly as conditions favorable to calcification waned and waxed.

G. D. Stanley is at the Department of Geology, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA. E-mail: fossil@selway.umt.edu D. G. Fautin is at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA. E-mail: fautin@ukans.edu

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