Hard-bodied aquatic filter feeders called lophophorates are often found in the fossil record, but soft-bodied examples are rare. Now Mark Sutton of Imperial College London and his colleagues describe a tiny specimen from around 425 million years ago, during the Silurian period.
The 1.7-millimetre-long Drakozoon kalumon (pictured) has a conical body partly enclosed by a broad hood, and was found attached to the shell of a hard-bodied brachiopod. Coincidentally, Drakozoon may actually be a primitive relative of the brachiopods.
Its relative absence from the fossil record could well be a preservation bias, the authors suggest, and the invertebrate could have been a significant part of the Palaeozoic lophophorate community.
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Palaeontology: Small, soft, Silurian. Nature 466, 798 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/466798b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/466798b
