Èeská geologická služba
Virtual museum
Home  > Taxonomy > Animals > Metazoans > Molluscs > Hyoliths

Hyolitha (Hyoliths)

      Hyolitha are enigmatic animals with small conical shells known from the Palaeozoic Era. The calcareous shells have a cover (operculum) and two curved supports known as helens. Most are one to four centimeters in length and are triangular or elliptical in cross section. Some species have rings or stripes. Because hyoliths are extinct and do not obviously resemble any extant group, it is unclear which living group they are most closely related to. They may be molluscs; authors who suggest that they deserve their own phylum do not comment on the position of this phylum in the tree of life.Fossil traces showing a twisted, looped, intestine bear some resemblance to the gut of sipunculan worms. Despite the fact that hyolithid shells are common as fossils, little is known about their ancestry, internal structures, and life mode. They were probably benthic (bottom-dwellers). The first hyolith fossils appeared about 540 million years ago in the Purella antiqua Zone of the Nemakit-Daldynian Stage of Siberia and in its analogue the Paragloborilus subglobosus–Purella squamulosa Zone of the Meishucunian Stage of China. Hyolith abundance and diversity attain a maximum in the Cambrian, followed by a progressive decline up to their Permian extinction.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyolithid
Hyolitha
Img. 94:
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3042
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3053
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3074
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3079
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3082
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3087
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3089
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 XA788
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 YA2726
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 VL376
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 VL1677
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 VL1273
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 VL1274
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 VL1715
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 VL434
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3012
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3018
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3025
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3031
Hyolitha Marek, 1963 MŠ3035

Virtual museum of the Czech Geological Survey, www.geology.cz, (C) Czech Geological Survey, 2011, v.0.99 [13.12.2011]