Since all modern ctenophores except the beroids have cydippid-like larvae, it has widely been assumed that their last common ancestor also resembled cydippids, having an egg-shaped body and a pair of retractable tentacles. Richard Harbison's purely morphological analysis in 1985 concluded that the cydippids are not monophyletic, in other words do not contain all and only the descendants of a single common ancestor that was itself a cydippid. Instead he found that various cydippid families were more similar to members of other ctenophore orders than to other cydippids. He also suggested that the last common ancestor of modern ctenophores was either cydippid-like or beroid-like. A molecular phylogeny analysis in 2001, using 26 species, including 4 recently discovered ones, confirmed that the cydippids are not monophyletic and concluded that the last common ancestor of modern ctenophores was cydippid-like. It also found that the genetic differences between these species were very small – so small that the relationships between the Lobata, Cestida and Thalassocalycida remained uncertain. This suggests that the last common ancestor of modern ctenophores was relatively recent, and perhaps was lucky enough to survive the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 65.5 million years ago while other lineages perished. When the analysis was broadened to include representatives of other phyla, it concluded that cnidarians are probably more closely related to bilaterians than either group is to ctenophores but that this diagnosis is uncertain.
A molecular phylogeny analysis confirmed that cydippid are not what?
monophyletic monophyletic monophyletic