Cyclostomatida, or cyclostomata (also known as cyclostomes), are an ancient order of stenolaemate bryozoans which first appeared in the Lower Ordovician. It consists of 7+ suborders, 59+ families, 373+ genera, and 666+ species. The cyclostome bryozoans were dominant in the Mesozoic; since that era, they have decreased. Currently, cyclostomes seldom constitute more than 20% of the species recorded in regional bryozoan faunas.
Cyclostomatida, or cyclostomata (also known as cyclostomes), are an ancient order of stenolaemate bryozoans which first appeared in the Lower Ordovician. It consists of 7+ suborders, 59+ families, 373+ genera, and 666+ species. The cyclostome bryozoans were dominant in the Mesozoic; since that era, they have decreased. Currently, cyclostomes seldom constitute more than 20% of the species recorded in regional bryozoan faunas.
==Taxonomy== Traditionally, cyclostomes have been divided into two groups according to the skeletal organization. In free-walled (or double-walled) cyclostomes, the exterior frontal walls of the zooids are uncalcified; autozooids have either a polygonal aperture bounded by vertical interior walls, or a subcircular aperture in species with kenozooids filling the spaces between the autozooids. By contrast, fixed-walled (or single-walled) cyclostomes have much of the exterior frontal wall calcified; autozooids normally have a subcircular aperture located at or close to the frontal wall.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).