Takakkawia: the strangest sponge ever?

This is the latest in a series (see playlist) on early sponge evolution, and tackles perhaps the strangest of all fossil sponges: Takakkawia. Trying to make sense of this is a real challenge, but with the help of fragmentary specimens it turns out to be possible! https://www.academia.edu/download/507... (may need regsitration with academia.edu) There are also other sponges with tetraradial symmetry from the early Cambrian: https://link.springer.com/article/10.... (paywall, I'm afraid). The potentially MOST interesting thing is that there appears to be a close similarity to other sponges that have been assigned to early ctenophores in a series of recent papers... so we'll discuss what that means for early animal evolution too! Ou et al. 2015: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Zhao et al. 2019: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... Presented by Joe Botting, independent palaeontologist and Honorary Research Fellow at the National Museum Wales. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Channel Membership: to support the channel for £3.99 per month, please investigate the 'join' button underneath the video. You can expect 2-3 extra videos per month, showing current research, related mainly to the Ordovician Castle Bank Biota.