| Louisella Temporal range: | |
|---|---|
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| Retouched images from Walcott's description of Miskoia, now synonymized with Louisella | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Stem group: | Priapulida (?) |
| Class: | † Archaeopriapulida |
| Family: | † Miskoiidae |
| Genus: | † Louisella Walcott, 1911 |
| Species | |
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Louisella is a genus of worm known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. It was originally described by Charles Walcott in 1911 as a holothurian echinoderm, [1] and represents a senior synonym of Miskoia, which was originally described as an annelid. [2] 48 specimens of Louisella are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise < 0.1% of the community. [3] It has been stated to have palaeoscolecid-like sclerites, [4] though this is not in fact the case. [5]
It's also been interpreted as an annelid [6] and a sipunculan, [7] (neither on particularly compelling grounds) and a pripaulid, [8] but it is more conservatively considered to represent an ecdysozoan worm; [5] deep ecdysozoan relationships are not yet well resolved, making a more precise affiliation challenging.
