The cambroernids are a clade of unusual Paleozoic animals with coiled bodies and filamentous tentacles. They include a number of early to middle Paleozoic (Cambrian to Devonian) genera noted as "bizarre" or "orphan" taxa, meaning that their affinities with other animals, living or extinct, have long been uncertain. While initially defined as an "informal stem group," later work with better-preserved fossils has strengthened the argument for Cambroernida as a monophyletic clade.
Cambroernids encompass three particular types of enigmatic animals first appearing in the Cambrian: Herpetogaster (the type genus), Phlogites, and the Eldonioidea. They are united by a set of common features including at least one pair of bifurcated or divided oral tentacles, and a large stomach and narrower intestine enclosed together in a coiled sac.
Body coiling increased throughout this group's evolution. Herpetogaster has a segmented and clockwise-curved body attached to the substrate via a narrow and partially mobile stolon (stalk). Phlogites was even more simple, with a thick immobile stolon leading up to a tentacle-bearing calyx (cup-shaped main body). The eldoniids (also known as eldonioids or eldonids) were diverse and disc-shaped, commonly described as "medusiform", i.e. jellyfish-shaped. Though the lifestyle of eldoniids is still debated, it can be agreed that they had a large curved stomach and no stolon.
The lack of a post-anal tail in cambroernids suggests that, contrary to long-held assumptions, this feature was not present in the common ancestor of deuterostomes. This is congruent with the significant differences between the post-anal tails of chordates and hemichordates. This and other features of cambroernids suggest that post-anal tails, gill bars, and a U-shaped gut evolved multiple times in the deuterostomes through convergence.
The following cladogram is simpllified from Li et al. 2023; only a sampling of eldonioids were included in the analysis:
Previously, some cambroernids were compared to members of the broad invertebrate clade Lophotrochozoa. In particularl, they were allied with the lophophorates, a subset of lophotrochozoans bearing ciliated tentacles known as lophophores. However, this interpretation has more recently been considered unlikely relative to the deuterostome hypothesis for cambroernid origins.