''Essexella'' is an extinct genus of
scyphozoa
The Scyphozoa are an exclusively marine class of the phylum Cnidaria, referred to as the true jellyfish (or "true jellies").
The class name Scyphozoa comes from the Greek word ''skyphos'' (), denoting a kind of drinking cup and alluding to the ...
n
jellyfish
Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbrella- ...
known from
Late Carboniferous
Late may refer to:
* LATE, an acronym which could stand for:
** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia
** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law
** Local average treatment effect, ...
fossils containing the species ''Essexella asherae''. See
list of prehistoric medusozoans
This list of prehistoric medusozoan genera is an attempt to create a comprehensive listing of all genera that have ever been included in the subphylum Medusozoa, excluding purely vernacular terms. The list includes all commonly accepted genera, b ...
. It is one of the most recurrent organisms in the
Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois.
In the Essex
biota of Mazon Creek, it consists of 42% of all fossil finds.
Its behavior is speculated to be similar to that of modern-day jellyfish.
See also
*
Octomedusa
''Octomedusa'' is a genus of extinct scyphozoan jellyfish known from the Moscovian (Carboniferous), Late Carboniferous sediments of the Mazon Creek fossil beds. It contains a single species, ''O. pieckorum''. It was first described by Gordon Johns ...
References
Carboniferous animals of North America
Prehistoric cnidarian genera
Rhizostomatidae
Carboniferous cnidarians
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