''Kailidiscus'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

echinoderm An echinoderm () is any animal of the phylum Echinodermata (), which includes starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumbers, as well as the sessile sea lilies or "stone lilies". While bilaterally symmetrical as ...

s which existed in what is now

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

during the Middle

Cambrian The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordov ...

period. It was named by Yuanlong Zhao, Colin D. Sumrall, Ronald L. Parsley and Jin Peng in

2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...

, and the

type Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * ...

and only species is ''Kailidiscus chinensis''. It bears close resemblance to the Burgess Shale fossil ''

Walcottidiscus ''Walcottidiscus'' is a genus of pentagonally shaped echinoderms known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. 16 specimens of ''Walcottidiscus'' are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise < 0.1% of the community.

''.

References

Edrioasteroidea Prehistoric Crinozoa genera Cambrian echinoderms Fossil taxa described in 2010 Fossils of China {{paleo-echinoderm-stub