"This 530 million-year-old (Myr) fish-like animal resembles the contemporaneous Yunnanozoon from the Chengjiang fauna (about 35 km southeast of Haikou) in several anatomic features. But Haikouella also has several additional anatomic features: a heart, ventral and dorsal aorta, an anterior branchial arterial, gill filaments, a caudal projection, a neural cord with a relatively large brain, a head with possible lateral eyes, and a ventrally situated buccal cavity with short tentacles. These findings indicate that Haikouella probably represents a very early craniate-like chordate that lived near the beginning of the Cambrian period during the main burst of the Cambrian explosion." Chen et al. 1999.

Specimen purchased in 2003.