Pikaia
Pikaia gracilens
Pikaia is one of the best-known early chordates and provides context for the origins of vertebrates.
Image: DataBase Center for Life Science (DBCLS) · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Pikaia gracilens
- Period
- Middle Cambrian
- Lived
- 508–505 Ma (508 million years ago)
- Diet
- Unknown
- Habitat
- Open sea
- Length (estimate)
- 0.05 m
Description
Pikaia had an elongated body, a flattened head and a distinct zigzag pattern of muscles along its trunk. A flexible supporting rod in its body is generally interpreted as a primitive notochord. It probably moved through the water with side-to-side undulations and may have taken in suspended food particles. Its precise position among early chordates continues to be refined.
Habitat
Shallow seas, swimming above the seabed.
Fossil sites
Burgess Shale, British Columbia
Burgess Shale Formation
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Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Pikaia