Cystoid

cystoid, any member of an extinct class (Cystoidea) of primitive echinoderms (animals with a hard, calcareous external skeleton, related to the modern sea lily and starfish) that first appeared during the Middle Ordovician Epoch and persisted into the Late Devonian Epoch (the Ordovician Period began about 488 million years ago, and the Devonian Period ended 359 million years ago). Once diverse and important, the cystoids had saclike bodies that were attached to a stem anchored to the seafloor. Numerous plates covered the body. Some forms are important guide, or index, fossils and thus allow the correlation of sometimes widely separated rock units.