Imbricata
| Imbricata Temporal range:
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|---|---|
Scientific classification
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| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Echinodermata |
| Class: | †Eocrinoidea |
| Order: | †Imbricata Sprinkle 1973 |
| Groups included[1] | |
| Cladistically included but traditionally excluded taxa | |
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Imbricata is a paraphyletic group of basal blastozoans that is traditionally considered to be an order. It is characterized by imbricate plating on some or all of the body wall, sharply delineated from the tesselate oral surface. This body organization is a plesiomorphic characteristic seen in other basal echinoderms such as Stromatocystis or Camptostroma.[2] Imbricata contains the Lepidocystidae, which are the most basal group of blastozoans, and the Felbabkacystidae, which illustrate the transition to the Gogiida and other derived blastozoans.[3]
Phylogeny
The following cladogram, after Nardin et al. 2017 with slight modifications,[4] shows the position of Imbricata relative to Gogiida and to Blastozoa as a whole, illustrating the basal position of the Lepidocystidae and the transitional position of the Felbabkacystidae:
| Blastozoa |
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References
- ^ "Imbricata". Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera. Retrieved 12 October 2025.
- ^ Nardin et al. 2017, p. 674
- ^ Mooi et al. 2024, p. 480
- ^ Nardin et al. 2017, p. 680 (Note: This source misspells "Lichenoididae" as "Lichenoidae" and "Lepidocystidae" as "Lepidocystoidae", contrary to the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part S, Echinodermata 1, and other sources such as the PBDB and the IRMNG; this cladogram shows the more common spellings and placements.)
Works cited
- Mooi, Rich; Lefebvre, Bertrand; Guensburg, Thomas E.; Nohejlová, Martina; Dupichaud, Christophe (December 2024). "Approaches to understanding echinoderm origins. Part 2: Questioning conceptual models". Cahiers de Biologie Marine. 65: 463–490. doi:10.21411/CBM.A.604F2876.
- Nardin, Elise; Lefebvre, Bertrand; Fatka, Oldřich; Nohejlová, Martina; Kašička, Libor; Šinágl, Miroslav; Szabad, Michal (2017). "Evolutionary implications of a new transitional blastozoan echinoderm from the middle Cambrian of the Czech Republic". Journal of Paleontology. 91 (4): 672–684. Bibcode:2017JPal...91..672N. doi:10.1017/jpa.2016.157.