Mysterious sea creature part of a new family

One branch on the tree of life is a bit more crowded today as a team of scientists have revealed what a bizarre group of cone-shaped sea creatures actually are, as reported in Nature . Known as hyoliths, these extinct marine creatures were long believed to belong to the same family as snails, squids and other molluscs, but the researchers have shown that they are instead more closely related to brachiopods - a group which has a rich fossil record but with only a few living species known today. The research team involved paleontologists from Durham University, the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Family ties It was the way the hyoliths fed that gave the team the strongest clues about their family ties. Brachiopods possess a soft body enclosed between upper and lower shells, unlike the left and right arrangement of shells in clams and other bivalve molluscs. Brachiopods open their shells at the front when feeding but otherwise keep them closed to protect their feeding apparatus and other body parts inside the shells. In typical hyolith fossils, only the shells are preserved.