Vaveliksia

Vaveliksia
Temporal range: Ediacaran
Artist's reconstruction of V. velikanovi
Scientific classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Porifera (?)
Family: Olgunidae
Genus: Vaveliksia
Fedonkin, 1983
Species
  • V. velikanovi Fedonkin, 1983 (Type)
  • V. vana Serezhnikova, 2004

Vaveliksia is an extinct genus of Ediacaran Sponge-like organism with a long, tubular-shaped body and a attachment disk similar to that of Petalonamids. The Vaveliksia genus contained two species, Vaveliksia velikanovi (which honours Vyacheslav A. Velikanov, a Ukrainian geologist) as well as Vaveliksia vana (with "vana" meaning incorporeal in Latin). The two species vary in appearance to one another, with V. velikanovi having a more tubular-shaped, sack-like morphology with a crown of wrinkles on top of one of its ends as well as possessing a much more disk-like holdfast with V. vana having an appearance more similar to that of a Poriferan, with V. vana having a much more dome-shaped holdfast and a capsule-like body with no crown of wrinkles unlike V. velikanovi.