The Luolishaniidae or Luolishaniida are a group of

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 ...

and

Ordovician The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and System (geology), system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era (geology), Era, and the second of twelve periods of the Phanerozoic Eon (geology), Eon. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years f ...

lobopodian Lobopodians are members of the informal group Lobopodia (), or the formally erected phylum Lobopoda Cavalier-Smith (1998). They are panarthropods with stubby legs called lobopods, a term which may also be used as a common name of this group as w ...

s with anterior 5 or 6 pairs of setiferous lobopods. Most luolishaniids also have posterior lobopods each with a hooked claws, and thorn-shaped sclerites arranged as three or more per trunk segment. The type genus is based on ''

Luolishania ''Luolishania'' is an extinct genus of lobopodian panarthropod and known from the Lower Cambrian Chiungchussu Formation (Maotianshan Shales) of the Chengjiang County, Yunnan Province, China. A monotypic genus, it contains one species ''Luolisha ...

longicruris'' Hou and Chen, 1989, from the

Chengjiang Lagerstatte The Maotianshan Shales () are a series of Early Cambrian sedimentary deposits in the Chiungchussu Formation or Heilinpu Formation, famous for their '' Konservat Lagerstätten'', deposits known for the exceptional preservation of fossilized organ ...

, South China. They are presumed to have been

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "the depths". ...

suspension or filter feeders. New specimens of the previously enigmatic ''

Facivermis ''Facivermis'' (meaning "torch worm" ) is a genus of sessile lobopodian from the Lower Cambrian Maotianshan shales of China Anatomy ''Facivermis'' was a worm-like creature up to 90 mm long. Its body was divided into three sections. The ant ...

'' show that it was a sessile tube-dweller, and part of this group. A 2023 analysis concluded, on the basis of numerous morphological similarities, that luolishaniids might be the closest known relatives of

tardigrades Tardigrades (), known colloquially as water bears or moss piglets, are a phylum of eight-legged Segmentation (biology), segmented micro-animals. They were first described by the German zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773, who calle ...

Notes

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q16865447 Lobopodia Cambrian invertebrates Prehistoric protostome families