''Daihua sanqiong'' is a possible ancestor of
comb jellies
Ctenophora (; ctenophore ; ) comprise a phylum of marine invertebrates, commonly known as comb jellies, that inhabit sea waters worldwide. They are notable for the groups of cilia they use for swimming (commonly referred to as "combs"), and ...
.
It was a sessile relative to comb jellies.
It had combs with cilia just like modern day comb jellies.
It is named after the
Dai people
The Dai people (Burmese: ရှမ်းလူမျိုး; khb, ᨴᩱ/ᨴᩱ᩠ᨿ; lo, ໄຕ; th, ไท; shn, တႆး, ; , ; ) refers to several Tai-speaking ethnic groups living in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and t ...
. The name means Dai flower.
In 2019, ''Daihua'' and other Cambrian forms were hypothesized to be stem-group
ctenophores
Ctenophora (; ctenophore ; ) comprise a phylum of marine invertebrates, commonly known as comb jellies, that inhabit sea waters worldwide. They are notable for the groups of cilia they use for swimming (commonly referred to as "combs"), and ...
. This leads to the assertion that ctenophores evolved from immotile, suspensivorous forms, a lifestyle similar to that of
polyps
A polyp in zoology is one of two forms found in the phylum Cnidaria, the other being the medusa. Polyps are roughly cylindrical in shape and elongated at the axis of the vase-shaped body. In solitary polyps, the aboral (opposite to oral) end ...
.
Cladogram after Zhao ''et al.'', 2019:
See also
* ''
Xianguangia
''Xianguangia'' is a soft-bodied sea anemone-like fossil animal from the Chengjiang Biota of China.
Description
''Xianguangia sinica'' has a cylindrical body with a whorl of nearly 16 tentacles around the oral disc, similar to the modern anthozo ...
''
* ''
Dinomischus
''Dinomischus ''is a rare fossil animal from the Cambrian period. It reached 20 mm in height,
was attached to the sea floor by a stalk, and looked loosely like a flower. The cup-shaped body at the top of the stalk probably fed by filtering t ...
''
* ''
Siphusauctum
''Siphusauctum'' is an extinct genus of filter-feeding animals that lived during the Middle Cambrian about 510 million years ago. Attached to the substrate by a holdfast, it had a tulip-shaped body, called the calyx, into which it actively pumpe ...
''
References
Prehistoric animals
Cambrian genera
Fossil taxa described in 2019
Animals described in 2019
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