Capsospongia
Extinct genus of sponges
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Capsospongia, formerly known as Corralia or Corralio, is a middle Cambrian sponge genus known from three specimens in the Burgess Shale.[1] Its type and only species is Capsospongia undulata. It has a narrow base, and consists of bulging rings which get wider further up the sponge, resulting in a conical shape. Its open top was presumably used to expel water that had passed through the sponge cells and been filtered for nutrients.
| Capsospongia Temporal range: Middle Cambrian, | |
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| Artist's restoration | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Porifera |
| Class: | Demospongiae |
| Family: | †Anthaspidellidae |
| Genus: | †Capsospongia Rigby 1986 |
| Species: | †C. undulata |
| Binomial name | |
| †Capsospongia undulata Walcott 1920 | |
Like most sponges, Capsospoingia had a spicular skeleton; long spicules parallel to the growth direction formed columns which were connected by shorter lateral spicules.
History
Capsospongia undulata was named in 1920 by Charles Walcott as Corralia undulata.[2] However, the name was preoccupied by Corralia Roewer, 1913, a member of Opiliones. In 1955, de Laubenfels renamed the genus Corralio, adopting an incorrect spelling of Corralia Walcott had used.[3][4] In 1986 Keith Rigby established the new genus Capsospongia for it.[5] In 2004, he and Desmond Collins described a third specimen.[5]
C. undulata intersects with the complicated taxonomic history of the anomalocarids. In 1911, Walcott had named two taxa, Peytoia and Laggania, which he interpreted as a jellyfish and a sea cucumber respectively.[6] In 1978, Simon Conway Morris recognized that the mouthparts of Laggania closely resembled Peytoia, but erroneously concluded that this was because Laggania was a composite fossil of a Peytoia and another organism, which he concluded was a sponge and suggested was probably a specimen of C. undulata.[4] However, it was subsequently determined that Laggania and Peytoia were partial specimens of a larger animal, a radiodont, which now bears the name Peytoia.[7][8]
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