[2] Announcing the discovery on 4 November 2020 at a press conference, Zeng Han of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, said that the animal "bridges the evolutionary gap from Anomalocaris to true arthropods and forms a key ‘missing link’ in the origin of arthropods,"[3] which was "predicted by Darwin’s evolutionary theory.

Zeng Han, Zhao Fangchen, and Huang Diying of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, made the formal description and taxonomy in Nature in 2020.

[1][2] Kylinxia is a tiny shrimp-like arthropod, measuring about 5 centimetres (2.0 in) long and about 1.2 cm (0.47 in) broad at the widest part of the body.

[1][7] Kylinxia possesses a mixture of characters resembling various Cambrian arthropod taxa, notably Opabinia (eyes), radiodonts (frontalmost appendages) and megacheirans (trunk).

[8][1] Similar to the multisegmented megacheirans, the trunk of Kylinxia covers most of the body length and is composed of up to 26[6] metameric segments (tergites) each corresponded to a pair of appendages.