Raymond Quarry Burgessomedusa specimens preserve a bell, marginal tentacles and radial structures consistent with a swimming medusozoan; this middle-Cambrian sample is not the first appearance of all medusae.
claim:taxon:burgessomedusaBurgessomedusa
A Raymond Quarry sample of 182 compressed middle-Cambrian fossils preserves a large bell and numerous marginal tentacles; the authors recover a medusozoan affinity, while its exact placement is model-dependent.
Represented range506–504 Ma
Content packagesponges-cnidarians
PBDBtxn:495050
Evidence boundary
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Claim ledger
Burgessomedusa is displayed at 506–504 Ma only as the Raymond Quarry specimen interval described for the genus; it is not a crown-medusozoan FAD, direct ancestor or global continuous duration.
claim:taxon:burgessomedusa:range-boundary-rc50Moon et al. describe Burgessomedusa phasmiformis from Raymond Quarry and recover a medusozoan affinity; exact placement among stem cubozoans, stem Acraspeda and alternatives remains model-dependent.
claim:taxon:burgessomedusa:taxonomyThe Raymond Quarry sample includes 182 specimens, with a cuboidal umbrella up to about 20 cm high, more than 90 short marginal tentacles and preserved internal features.
claim:taxon:burgessomedusa:morphologyThe described Burgessomedusa material is from Raymond Quarry in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada; this is a locality claim, not a global distribution.
claim:taxon:burgessomedusa:biogeographyBell shape and specimen associations provide indirect support for free swimming and a possible nektobenthic predatory habit, not observed feeding or measured swimming performance.
claim:taxon:burgessomedusa:ecologyKnown limits
- A missing branch or fossil occurrence does not imply biological absence. Internal nodes are not calibrated divergence estimates.
References
- A macroscopic free-swimming medusa from the middle Cambrian Burgess ShaleMoon, J.; Caron, J.-B.; Moysiuk, J. · 2023 · DOI 10.1098/rspb.2022.2490
- Open Tree of Life web servicesOpenTreeOfLife Project
- The Paleobiology Database application programming interfacePeters, S.E.; McClennen, M. · 2016 · DOI 10.1017/pab.2015.39
- Denormalized occurrence and taxon tables of the Paleobiology DatabaseThe Paleobiology Database Community; Kocsis, Á.T. · 2026 · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21620933