Fossil History

No peer-reviewed literature reviewing the fossil history of J. funebris is currently available. Due to being a soft-bodied animal, definitive cases of successful nudibranch fossilisation are rare. By dating fossils of known shelled relatives, or by looking at the ages of evolutionary lineages to Opisthobranchia or Gastropoda, we can estimate the age of Nudibranchia. Most evidence suggests that Nudibranchia is quite an old order, dating back to at least 180 million years ago.

Nudibranchs first recorded in Australia in the early 1800’s by a French expidition led by Dumont d’Urville in l’Astrolabe in Western Australia (Rudman & Willan 1998).