''Laevipilina antarctica'' is a species of

monoplacophora Monoplacophora , meaning "bearing one plate", is a polyphyletic superclass of molluscs with a cap-like shell inhabiting deep sea environments . Extant representatives were not recognized as such until 1952; previously they were known only from ...

n, a superficially limpet-like marine

mollusk Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...

. It is found in the

Weddell Sea The Weddell Sea is part of the Southern Ocean and contains the Weddell Gyre. Its land boundaries are defined by the bay formed from the coasts of Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula. The easternmost point is Cape Norvegia at Princess Martha ...

and the

Lazarev Sea The Lazarev Sea (, ''More Lazareva'') is a proposed name for a marginal sea of the Southern Ocean. It would be bordered by two proposals from a 2002 International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) draft, a King Haakon VII Sea to the west and a Ri ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

.Schwabe, Enrico (2008)
A summary of reports of abyssal and hadal Monoplacophora and Polyplacophora (Mollusca)
In: Martínez Arbizu, P. & Brix, S. (Eds) (2008) Bringing Light into Deep-sea Biodiversity. ''Zootaxa'', 1866, 1–574.

Evolution

In 2006, a molecular study on ''Laevipilina antarctica'' suggested that extant Monoplacophora and Polyplacophora form a well-supported clade with the researched ''

Neopilina ''Neopilina'' is a highly derived genus of modern monoplacophoran.Organisms, Genes and Evolution: Evolutionary Theory at the Crossroads ; Proceedings of the 7th International Senckenberg Conference. By Dieter Stefan Peters, Michael Weingarten. C ...

'' closest to the chitons. The two classes in this new clade, with the proposed name Serialia, all show a variable number of serially repeated

gill A gill () is a respiratory organ that many aquatic organisms use to extract dissolved oxygen from water and to excrete carbon dioxide. The gills of some species, such as hermit crabs, have adapted to allow respiration on land provided they are ...

s and eight sets of dorsoventral pedal retractor muscles.

References

Monoplacophora Molluscs described in 1992 {{mollusc-stub