This is generally seen as a chordate, similar in some ways to the lancelets. These primitive chordates are shy, marine creatures, without fins, skull, jaws, backbone or a proper head. They look like animated anchovy fillets. Lancelets are popular food items, supporting a fishery in the South China Sea, but they are known worldwide. The researchers think that Cathaymyrus , like Pikaia , is a fossil relative of modern lancelets.
Chordates are usually long and narrow, with a stiffening rod of cartilage running along the back.
In vertebrates this rod, the notochord, is replaced by bone to become the spinal column. In other chordates, such as sea-squirts, the notochord is present only in the larva. Adult sea-squirts have no notochords. Lancelets are somewhere in between, with a notochord that remains throughout life. There is good evidence that Cathaymyrus and Pikaia had notochords.