Name: Phylum Cnidaria (a jellyfish)
Age: Cambrian
Size: mm (25.4mm=1 inch): Matrix measures 240 by 205
Location: Mount Simon Sandstone Outlier, Mosinee,Wisconsin
Code: DD14
Price: $420.00 - Sold
Phylum
Cnidaria (anemones, corals, jellyfish and sea pens) are among the most ancient
animals, simplest in body form, and yet are ubiquitous and widespread even
today in marine environments. The earliest forms in the fossil record appear
in Ediacarian fauna of Southern Australia, which dates to the Precambrian
some 600 million years ago. This is clear testiment that old and simple
animals can be enormously successful.
Here we have a sandstone plate with three Cambrian Cnidarians from an intriguing site in Central Wisconsin. Being comprised entirely of soft tissue unlike animals with exoskeletons (e.g., trilobites) or skeletons (vertebrates), jellyfish fossils are body fossils that are impressions of the jellyfish. Such fossil impressions are rare, especially from the Cambrian. Note that these jellyfish have tentacles in the familiar radial symmetry of Cnidarians. Jellyfish were some of the most ferocious preditors of the Cambrian marine environment.
These jellyfish come from a particular horizon in the Mount Simon Sandstone formation that also yields facinating Diplichnites, huge Jellyfish (Medusae) and Climactichnites.
