Description
Diania cactiformis
Early Ordovician (Arenigian)
Fezouata Formation
Mecissi-Zagora Region, Draa Valley
Morocco
Extremely rare 18mm lobopod on 93mm slab. Fezouata lobopods are usually strangely faint, suggesting a different preservation than the normally very colorful arthropods, worms and echinoderms. Their soft parts may not have fixed iron minerals as readily as the other creatures, making them even more rare and difficult to find.
Ever since the discovery of Hallucigenia and Aysheaia in the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale at the beginning of the 20th century, lobopods have been found in a number of Cambrian sites, but almost never in the Ordovician or younger rocks with rare exceptions in the Mazon Creek lagerstatte. Diania was previously only known from the Chengjiang lagerstatte in the Early Cambrian (520 millions years ago) so this specimen at 480 million years means the genus spans over 40 million years!
