Astutuscaris
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Astutuscaris Temporal range: | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Holotype specimen | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Euarthropoda |
| Order: | incertae sedis |
| Genus: | †Astutuscaris Jiao et al., 2022 |
| Species: | †A. bispinifer |
| Binomial name | |
| †Astutuscaris bispinifer Jiao et al., 2022 | |
Astutuscaris is an extinct genus of small euarthropod with uncertain affinities. It was found in the Chinese Burgess Shale-type Cambrian Stage 4 Guanshan Biota, part of the Wulongqing Formation, which has provided numerous non-trilobite arthropods. The genus contains one species, Astutuscaris bispinifer.
The only known specimen is an articulated individual, accessioned as RCP 0002 and its counterpart RCP 0002b at the Research Center of Paleobiology, Yuxi Normal University. It is dorsoventrally compressed and nearly complete. The specimen was found near Lihuazhuang village in siltstone, sandstone, and thin muddy shale beds, situated in the Yiliang County, Kunming in Yunnan Province, southern China. This locality is part of the lower Cambrian Stage 4 Wulongqing Formation (Palaeolenus biozone).
The genus name comes from the Latin astutus, meaning flexible, and caris, meaning shrimp, referring to the fact that it was a marine arthropod. The specific name means "two spines" in Latin, in reference to the pair of terminal spines.[1][2]
Description
Astutuscaris is a small elongate euarthropod. The body is 8.6 mm (0.34 in) long and 2.2 mm (0.087 in) wide. The most distinctive feature is the first pair of curved horn-like appendages without sturdy spines or elbow articulation. No segmentation is observed. The cephalon is incomplete but seems to be semi-elliptical. It possesses a pair of possible antero-median large eyes. The dorsal exoskeleton is composed of 11 imbricated tergites and is terminated by a pair of sturdy spines. The eleventh tergite is slightly longer than the others and has no pleural spine. There is a robust endopod composed of five segments under the cephalic shield. Four other endopods are observed under the first three tergites. They do not display any clear segmentation. The positioning suggests one pair of appendages per tergite. A limb of the third tergite possibly preserves an exopod. A possible gut is also preserved along the body.[1]
