Exceptionally preserved soft parts in fossils from the Lower Ordovician of Morocco clarify stylophoran affinities within basal deuterostomes.

2019

10 pages; International audience; The extinct echinoderm clade Stylophora consists of some of the strangest known deuterostomes. Stylophorans are known from complete, fully articulated skeletal remains from the middle Cambrian to the Pennsylvanian, but remain difficult to interpret. Their bizarre morphology, with a single appendage extending from a main body, has spawned vigorous debate over the phylogenetic significance of stylophorans, which were long considered modified but bona fide echinoderms with a feeding appendage. More recent interpretation of this appendage as a posterior “tail-like” structure has literally turned the animal back to front, leading to consideration of stylophorans…