Banffozoa
Banffozoa is an extinct class of bilaterians. Most workers place it in the Vetulicolia, but the protostome-like features of some members have motivated ongoing debate. Banffozoa consists of the order Banffiata as well as a dwarf "Form A" that has not been formally described or named. Skeemella has been placed incertae sedis in this class, but has more recently been placed with the Banffiidae. Banffozoa may be paraphyletic even if Vetulicolia is monophyletic.

Unknown author Unknown author · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- ChordataPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Chordata
Time the record covers
At least 9.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 516 Mya to 506.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 521 Mya to 497 Mya.
7 occurrences of Banffozoa on record, most of them in the Cambrian. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
7 occurrences- Cambrian100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
5 formations
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The named rock units Banffozoa has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Banffozoa and its relatives
CambrianWhere Banffozoa and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
336 taxa- Banffia4 sites
- Choia4 sites
- Isoxys4 sites
- Naraoia4 sites
- Allonnia3 sites
- Amplectobelua3 sites
- Arthropoda3 sites
- Branchiocaris3 sites
- Corynetis3 sites
- Crumillospongia3 sites
- Halichondrites3 sites
- Hurdia3 sites
- Leptomitus3 sites
- Mollisonia3 sites
- Paraleptomitella3 sites
- Priapulida3 sites
- Saetaspongia3 sites
- Selkirkia3 sites
- Sidneyia3 sites
- Ambrolinevitus2 sites
- Archotuba2 sites
- Choiaella radiata2 sites
- Cricocosmia2 sites
- Ctenophora2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Banffozoa, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
6 references- A Cambrian soft-bodied biota after the first Phanerozoic mass extinction2
- The Qingjiang biota - A Burgess Shale-type fossil Lagerstätte from the early Cambrian of South China1
- Rare primitive deuterostomes from the Cambrian (Series 3) of Utah1
- A new phyllopod bed-like assemblage from the Burgess Shale of the Canadian Rockies1
- Community palaeoecology of the early Cambrian Maotianshan Shale biota: Ecological dominance of priapulid worms1
- Lower Cambrian Burgess Shale-type fossil associations of South China1
Each of the 7 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Banffozoa
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Unknown author Unknown author
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Banffozoa was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Banffozoa”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itChordata through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Caron 2006