The Wiwaxia corrugata species is a lofotrocozoa lived in the Middle Cambrian, found both in the famous Burgess Shale field and in Utah and Canada. It is a truly unusual and particular invertebrate because it has a bizarre morphology that is not typical of any living vertebrate. It reached a scarce 3-5 centimeters and had a flattened and rounded shape, with the body that was covered by numerous "hard" structures, or scleritome, similar to scales. Many specimens showed scleritomas arranged in different ways and shapes (flattened and adorned with parallel ridges covering the whole body, or spines arranged in a parallel way) probably associated with soft tissue, arranged in five distinct areas but the presence of this structure rich in sclerites it approaches the secie to other phyla such as that of annelids or molluscs. But the similarities, for example with molluscs, do not end here as Wiwaxi also possessed on the mouthparts, in which there were two or three rows of tooth-like structures, very similar to the radula of molluscs.
Smith Martin R. 2012 Mouthparts of the Burgess Shale fossils Odontogriphus and Wiwaxia: implications for the ancestral molluscan radulaProc. R. Soc. B.2794287–4295 http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.1577
Zhang, Z., Smith, M. & Shu, D. New reconstruction of the Wiwaxia scleritome, with data from Chengjiang juveniles. Ski Rep 5, 14810 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep14810
Yang, J., Smith, M., Lan, T. et al. Articulated Wiwaxia from the Cambrian Stage 3 Xiaoshiba Lagerstätte. Ski Rep 4, 4643 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep04643
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Wiwaxia corrugated Cambrian model fauna of the Burgess Shale
size: cm cm ocm in 3D resin
paleontological project: Gianpaolo Di Silvestro
3D Artist: Alessio Schirinzi