Stylophora

Taxobox
name = Stylophora
fossil_range =


image_width = 260px
image_caption =
regnum = Animalia
superphylum = Deuterostomia
phylum = Echinodermata
subphylum = Homalozoa
classis = Stylophora
classis_authority = Gill & Caster, 1960
subdivision_ranks = Genera
subdivision =
* "Enoploura"
* "Mitrocystella"
* "Mitrocystites"
* "Phyllocystis"
* "Scotiaecystis"
* "Cothurnocystis"

The Stylophora are a class within the subphylum Homalozoa of the Phylum Echinodermata. All its members are fossil. 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 symmetical and more streamlined.

See also

* Edrioasteroidea
* Helicoplacoidea
* Blastozoa

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