It was first described from phosphatized microfossils whose individual chambers were interpreted as housing the zooids of a non-mineralized bryozoan, which would make it the only affinity representative of that phylum – implying that all animal phyla originated in the Cambrian period.

[3] The subsequent discovery of articulated macrofossils from the Xiaoshiba[4] biota called into question the biological nature of the distal apertures, showing that the surface was instead covered with leaf-like triangular flanges.

Where a bryozoan affinity would denote the presence of a stalked ring of tentacles emerging from each module, the recovery of macrofossil material with soft tissue preservation demonstrated that each chamber was instead associated with a tapering conical flange, better suited to photosynthesis.

[5] Authors of the original study are unconvinced by this reinterpretation, suggesting in media reports that the absence of tentacles may in turn be an effect of imperfect preservation.

These different preservational modes mean that the material from the two settings is not identical, and it is challenging to establish beyond doubt that the two forms of fossil belong to the same species, or even on a cynical view both to the same sort of organism.