Anasca was a

bryozoa 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 ...

n sub-order under class Cheilostomida defined by the lack of an

ascus An ascus (; ) is the sexual spore-bearing cell produced in ascomycete fungi. Each ascus usually contains eight ascospores (or octad), produced by meiosis followed, in most species, by a mitotic cell division. However, asci in some genera o ...

in each

zooid A zooid or zoöid is a single animal that is part of a colonial animal. This lifestyle has been adopted by animals from separate unrelated taxa. Zooids are multicellular; their structure is similar to that of other solitary animals. The zooid ...

. It is no longer an accepted taxonomic grouping as it is considered a

polyphyletic A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of conver ...

and/or

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

grouping. The group is now subdivided into the suborders Inovicellata, Scrupariina, Malacostega, and

Flustrina Flustrina is a suborder under the order Cheilostomatida of gymnolaematan Bryozoa (sea mats). The structure of the individual zooids is generally simple, a box-like chamber of calcium carbonate, the polypides reaching out through an uncalcified ...

References

Protostome suborders Cheilostomatida Obsolete animal taxa {{bryozoan-stub