Biology of the Hyolitha

Abstract

Hyoliths are Paleozoic fossils that have a calcareous exoskeleton consisting of an elongate, usually bilaterally symmetrical cone, a close fitting operculum, and a pair of curved appendages. Their skeletal ultrastructure resembles the crossed-lamellar shell layers of some molluscs. Several specimens from the Ordovician of France and the Cambrian of Antarctica have parts of the gut preserved by infilling matrix, showing that both mouth ad anus were located near the cone aperture. Muscle scars in other hyolith shells indicate that the animal had a series of dorsoventral and longitudinal, or longitudinal and circular muscles, which operated through a hydrostatic skeleton to protract and retract the head, to open and close the operculum, and to move the appendages. Although the shell form and skeletal ultra-structure of hyoliths are of a molluscan type, the muscle insertions suggest that the hyolith cone is not homologous with the dorsal exoskeleton of primitive molluscs. Hyoliths probably constitute a small extinct branch of phylum size, related to the Mollusca and the Sipunculoidea. All three groups may have had common ancestors in the late Precambrian.