Eoporpita is an extinct genus of hydrozoans that lived during the Ediacaran Period, which lasted from 630 to 540 mya (The Paleobiology Database). The first fossil impression of Eoporpita was discovered at the Winter Coast of the White Sea in Russia, although more fossils were later found in South Australia (UCMP 2010). Uranium-lead zircon dating of the surrounding volcanic ash at the Russian site indicates that the fossil discovered there formed about 555 mya (Martin et al. 2002). Eoporpita is characterized by a central body about 6 cm in diameter with thick tentacles, and researchers initially classified it as a member of the order Chondrophora. Chondrophorines are somewhat unusual hydrozoan cnidarians that actually consist of a colony of individual polyps specialized for various functions, such as feeding or reproduction. However, systematists have since replaced Chondrophora with the family Porpitidae, and researchers now think that Eoporpita was not a chondrophorine but rather a benthic polyp similar to a sea anemone (UCMP 2010).

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University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP). Eoporpita from the White Sea Region of Russia. Accessed 26 Jan. 2010.

Martin, MW, DV Grazhdankin, SA Bowring, DAD Evans, and MA Fedonkin. 2002. Age of neoproterozoic bilatarian body and trace fossils, White Sea, Russia: Implications for metazoan evolution. Science 288: 841-845.