Stylophora

The stylophorans are an extinct group allied to the echinoderms, comprising the cornutes and mitrates.^[1] It is synonymous with the subphylum Calcichordata.

Its members have a shell like an echinoderm's. Some say that all or some of its members have gill slits like a chordate, and that its stem contained a notochord. In Mitrocystites and perhaps in other forms its stem does not end in an attachment organ, and the stem likelier served it as a tail for moving itself about by. Cothurnocystis is unsymmetrical and boot-shaped, and Mitrocystites is bilaterally symmetrical and more streamlined.

See also

• Edrioasteroidea
• Helicoplacoidea
• Blastozoa

(Stylophora may also denote a genus of present-day corals, Anthozoa)

References

External links

• http://sn2000.taxonomy.nl/Taxonomicon
• http://www.borntraeger-cramer.de/pubs/journals/0031-0220/paper/68/443 A calcichordate interpretation of the new mitrate Eumitrocystella savilli from the Ordovician of Morocco

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