"As long as it is not offensive, you can name it whatever you like," said Jon Ablett, curator of the Mollusca department at the museum.
The cephalopods agree with the rest of the Mollusca in basic structure, and the ancestors appear to have the closest affinity with the ancestors of the class Gastropoda.
All cephalopod eggs have a remarkable amount of yolk, unlike that in the rest of the Mollusca, so that segmentation is incomplete and restricted to one end of the egg, where the embryo develops.
One of the main questions surrounding molluscan relationships has been the identity of the sister taxon of the Mollusca the group that shares the last common ancestor with the Mollusca.
The Mollusca is a large animal phylum, second only to the Arthropoda in the number of described living species.
Two major positions have been taken one aligning the flatworms with the Mollusca and the other the annelid worms.
Others argue that while they are closely related to mollusks and other lophotrochozoan groups such as annelid worms or perhaps brachiopods, they are not members of the Mollusca (see Vinther and Nielsen 2005; Caron et al. 2006; Butterfield 2006 for a sampling of both pro and con arguments).
The story of the discovery and study of the Monoplacophora (or Tryblidia) and how they have contributed to our understanding of the evolution of the Mollusca highlights the importance of integrating data from the fossil record with the study of living forms.
The story of the discovery of living Monoplacophora (or Tryblidia) and the study of both fossil and living species has greatly shaped our ideas of the evolution of the Mollusca, and this body of work highlights the importance of integrating data from the fossil record with the study of living forms.
The molluscs or mollusks compose the large phylum of invertebrate animals known as the Mollusca.
Balanus amphitrite, Balanus glandula, and Carcinus aestuarii of the Arthropoda, and Mytilus galloprovincialis of the Mollusca also have invaded several areas and excluded native species.
