Polyzoa Opuntia
Bryozoa (also known as the Polyzoa, Ectoprocta or commonly as moss animals) are a phylum of simple, aquatic invertebrate animals, nearly all living in sedentary colonies. Typically about long, they have a special feeding structure called a lophophore, a "crown" of tentacles used for filter feeding. Most marine bryozoans live in tropical waters, but a few are found in oceanic trenches and polar waters. The bryozoans are classified as the marine bryozoans (Stenolaemata), freshwater bryozoans (Phylactolaemata), and mostly-marine bryozoans (Gymnolaemata), a few members of which prefer brackish water. 5,869living species are known. Originally all of the crown group Bryozoa were colonial, but as an adaptation to a mesopsammal (interstitial spaces in marine sand) life or to deep-sea habitats, secondarily solitary forms have since evolved. Solitary species have been described in four genera; (''Aethozooides'', ''Aethozoon'', ''Franzenella'' and ''Monobryozoon''). The latter having ...
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Pywackia
''Pywackia'' is a contentious Cambrian fossil that has been interpreted as the earliest (total group) Bryozoan, and the only representative of that phylum in the Cambrian period. Its Bryozoan credentials have been called into question, but the octocoral alternative is equally unconvincing, and there are reasons to suggest a position in the Stenolaemata Stenolaemata are a class of exclusively marine bryozoans. Stenolaemates originated and diversified in the Ordovician, and more than 600 species are still alive today.Fossils of Mexico
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