''Sialomorpha dominicana'', also known as the mold pig, is a

panarthropod Panarthropoda is a proposed animal clade containing the extant phyla Arthropoda, Tardigrada (water bears) and Onychophora (velvet worms). Panarthropods also include extinct marine legged worms known as lobopodians ("Lobopodia"), a paraphyletic gr ...

genus of uncertain affinities discovered in 30-million year old

Dominican amber Dominican amber is amber from the Dominican Republic derived from resin of the extinct tree ''Hymenaea protera''. Dominican amber differentiates itself from Baltic amber by being nearly always transparent, and it has a higher number of fossil incl ...

by George Poinar at

Oregon State University Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering co ...

and Diane R. Nelson at

East Tennessee University The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state, ...

. It was placed in a new genus and family (Sialomorphidae) unto itself, and appears to represent a new phylum. ''S. dominicana'' shares some resemblance to

tardigrade Tardigrades (), known colloquially as water bears or moss piglets, are a phylum of eight-legged segmented micro-animals. They were first described by the German zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773, who called them Kleiner Wasserbär ...

s and

mite Mites are small arachnids (eight-legged arthropods). Mites span two large orders of arachnids, the Acariformes and the Parasitiformes, which were historically grouped together in the subclass Acari, but genetic analysis does not show clear evid ...

s. It is about 100 µm long and grew by molting its exoskeleton. It was probably an omnivore, feeding on minute invertebrates and fungi, including mold.

References

{{Taxonbar, from1=Q70464160, from2=Q70464040, from3=Q70464216 Invertebrates Monotypic prehistoric animal genera Fossil taxa described in 2019 Enigmatic protostome taxa Dominican amber