[4] It was first described in 1882 by the oceanographer John Murray, after being discovered on an expedition in the ship Triton which dredged the deep ocean bed off the west coast of Scotland in an effort to find organisms new to science.

[5][6] The organism appears as an agglomeration of sediment a few centimetres across, a sandy ball that easily crumbles when removed from the seabed.

This theory is supported by the fact that it has high concentrations of lipids within its cytosol, which suggests that it may feed on bacteria from the sediment that makes up the tubes.

[7] In common with other xenophyophores, the organism has tiny crystals of barium sulphate, known as granellae, scattered throughout the cytosol.

[4] Syringammina fragilissima, the first xenophyophore known to science, was described by Henry Bowman Brady in 1883, from specimens dredged from the Faroe Channel.