He tracked down two further specimens, collected by further expeditions by teams from Harvard and the Royal Ontario Museum, allowing him to produce a reconstruction.

It consisted of a calyx (or body) on a long, thin stalk, surrounded by a whorl of 18 short "petals", which enclosed both openings of its U-shaped gut.

[2] The presence of this gut identified it as a metazoan, and the stem implied that it lived permanently attached to the sea floor by a small holdfast.

Siphusauctum gregarium (known as the "tulip animal") has been recovered from the Burgess Shale, but has a clearly different basic anatomy, with multiple openings at the base of the calyx, an anus at the top, and a large six-petaled internal organ interpreted as a filter-feeding device.

[9] The new data on D. venustus have added little to the debate; while a suggestion of echinoderm affinity has been floated,[10] no phyla are compellingly similar to the organism.