Oh yeah, I know about the lobopod connection. This isn’t just a casual thought. The connection to Hallucigenia has ALWAYS seemed really dicey to me
These are fossils that don’t give us much information, there’s no obvious head, no real anatomy, nothing. The connection to the Onychophora and the lobopods has always been based on the same level of morphological evidence that I hit the echinoderms from.
Also, just to be clear, there’s also plenty of room for a stem group of echinoderms too . . . I just had fun with the missing link angle, and we don’t really have a good tree of life for the old echinoderms, either. The sea cucumbers in particular are a bit soft (heh),
Meanwhile, it’s not like there’s anything that discounts the echinoderm path as far as I’ve identified . . . again, this is a fossil they had upside down until a few years ago. We’ve overframed with fossils before (anomalocarus, anyone?)
Now, if we had something solid connecting to any other branch then that’d be awesome, but I’m not finding it, I haven’t even found any evidence as to which end is which, have you? I’m not even sure the reconstructions are viable
