Maotianshan Shales fossil record. Phylum Porifera (sponges; 15 species) and Priapulida (16 species) are also well represented. Other phyla represented are Brachiopoda, Chaetognatha, Cnidaria, Ctenophora, Echinodermata, Hyolitha, Nematomorpha, Phoronida, and Chordata. Possible molluscs include "Wiwaxia" and "Nectocaris". About one in eight animals are problematic forms of uncertain affinity, some of which may have been evolutionary experiments that survived for only a brief period as benthic environments rapidly changed in the Cambrian. Chengjiang is the richest source of the lobopodia, a group including many early panarthropods, with six genera represented: "Luolishania", "Paucipodia", "Cardiodictyon"," Hallucigenia" (also known from the Burgess Shale), "Microdictyon", and "Onychodictyon".
Nephridium In freshwater crustacea, the saccate metanephridia are especially large because they are involved in osmoregulation. They have to remove large amounts of water from the tissues, as the crustacean's tissues are hypertonic to the surrounding water. A protonephridium ("proto" = "first") is a network of dead-end tubules lacking internal openings found in the phyla Platyhelminthes, Nemertea, Rotifera and Chordata (lancelets). The ends are called "flame cells" (if ciliated) or "solenocytes" (if flagellated); they function in osmoregulation and ionoregulation, respectively. The terminal cells are located at the blind end of the protonephridium. Each cell has one or more cilia and their