To select well-preserved specimens, all the fossils liberated from rock matrix were first investigated using a Leo 1530VP SEM instrument operating at 10 kV equipped with a field emission gun, located in the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS). To perform chemical composition analysis and TEM observation, several fossil specimens were embedded in UV-cured resin and then cut after tomographic reconstruction. We observed the physical sections using a field emission FEI Nova NanoSEM 450 microscope (FEI, Hillsboro, OR, USA) operating at 15 kV at the Electron Microscopy Lab (EML), Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGG-CAS). The elemental mapping was performed using an EDS system (Oxford X-Max 80) attached to the FEI Nova NanoSEM 450 microscope. The ultrathin sections for TEM observations were prepared with a dual-beam FIB-SEM system on a Zeiss Auriga Crossbeam instrument at the EML of IGG-CAS. TEM analyses were carried out on a JEM2100 microscope (JEOL, Tokyo, Japan) operating at 200 kV, located in the EML of IGG-CAS.
Yin Z., Sun W., Liu P., Chen J., Bottjer D.J., Li J, & Zhu M. (2022). Diverse and complex developmental mechanisms of early Ediacaran embryo-like fossils from the Weng'an Biota, southwest China. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 377(1847), 20210032.
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