Louisella
| Louisella Temporal range:
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| Retouched images from Walcott's description of Miskoia, now synonymized with Louisella | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Stem group: | Priapulida (?) |
| Class: | †Archaeopriapulida |
| Family: | †Miskoiidae |
| Genus: | †Louisella Walcott, 1911 |
| Species | |
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Louisella is a genus of worm known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. It was originally described by Charles Walcott in 1911 as a holothurian echinoderm,[1] and represents a senior synonym of Miskoia, which was originally described as an annelid.[2] 48 specimens of Louisella are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise < 0.1% of the community.[3] It has been stated to have palaeoscolecid-like sclerites,[4] though this is not in fact the case.[5]
It's also been interpreted as an annelid [6] and a sipunculan,[7] (neither on particularly compelling grounds) and a pripaulid,[8] but it is more conservatively considered to represent an ecdysozoan worm;[5] deep ecdysozoan relationships are not yet well resolved, making a more precise affiliation challenging.
References
- JSTOR 1303225.
- ^ Walcott, C. D. (1911). "Cambrian Geology and Paleontology II. Middle Cambrian annelids". Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. 57 (5): 109–145 – via Wikisource.
- S2CID 53646959.
- .
- ^
- ^ Madsen, F.J. 1957: On Walcott’s Supposed Cambrian Holothurians. Journal of Paleontology 31, 281–282.
- ^ Howell, B.F. 1962: Worms. In Moore, R. C. (ed.), Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology W (Miscellanea), W144–W177. Geological Society of America, New York.
- ^ Conway Morris, S. 1977: Fossil priapulid worms. Special Papers in Palaeontology 20, 1–95.
External links
- "Louisella pedunculata". Burgess Shale Fossil Gallery. Virtual Museum of Canada. 2011. Archived from the original on 2020-11-12.
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