Description

Anatifopsis minuta Chauvel 1941
Carpoid
Ordovician (Llandilian)
Col de Tanekfoult, North of Zagora, Morocco

Rare 14mm carpoid with feeding arm on 78mm slab.

Anatifopsis is a genus of carpoid known from the Ordovician of north Africa and Europe.

Carpoids appeared during the Cambrian and may have survived into the Carboniferous. Scientists have been fascinated by the group once considered stem-group echinoderms and then allied with other groups because they lacked the radial symmetry of echinoderms. In fact, they lack any symmetry and can be variable in form. However, because their skeletons have the same calcite-composed, crystalline structure as echinoderms, they are classified as belonging to that phylum.

John buys the weirdest things…uh, I mean this specimen is an interesting example of a fascinating group that disappeared long before the earliest dinosaurs.

What is a carpoid? This article explains them (PDF)