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Hallucigenia
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Hallucigenia

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Hallucigenia is a genus of lobopodian known from Cambrian-aged fossils in Burgess Shale-type deposits in Canada (Burgess Shale) and China, and from isolated spines around the world. The generic name reflects the type species' unusual appearance and eccentric history of study; when it was erected as a genus, H. sparsa was reconstructed as an enigmatic animal upside down and back to front. Lobopodians are a grade of Paleozoic panarthropods from which the velvet worms, water bears, and arthropods arose.

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Encyclopedic overview

10 sections
Contents
  • Description
  • History of study
  • Affinity
  • Diversity
  • Distribution
  • In popular culture
  • See also
  • References
  • Further reading
  • External links

Hallucigenia is a genus of lobopodian known from Cambrian-aged fossils in Burgess Shale-type deposits in Canada (Burgess Shale) and China, and from isolated spines around the world. The generic name reflects the type species' unusual appearance and eccentric history of study; when it was erected as a genus, H. sparsa was reconstructed as an enigmatic animal upside down and back to front. Lobopodians are a grade of Paleozoic panarthropods from which the velvet worms, water bears, and arthropods arose.

==Description== thumb|Reconstructions of H. fortis, H. hongmeia, and H. sparsa in scale.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Hallucigenia” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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