Cardiodictyon
Extinct genus of lobopodians
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cardiodictyon is a genus of lobopodian known from 518 millions years old Chengjiang Lagerstätte. 525 millions years old partial fossil is also reported.[1] It has ~25 pairs of legs, each associated with a pair of dorsal plates.
| Cardiodictyon Temporal range: Early Cambrian | |
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Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Clade: | Panarthropoda |
| Phylum: | †Lobopodia |
| Class: | †Xenusia |
| Order: | †Archonychophora |
| Family: | †Cardiodictyidae Hou & Bergström, 1995 |
| Genus: | †Cardiodictyon Hou, Ramsköld & Bergström, 1991 |
| Type species | |
| Cardiodictyon catenulum Hou, Ramsköld & Bergström, 1991 | |
Each leg terminates in a pair of claws.[2] It may or may not have a head shield,[3] though it certainly has an expanded head.[4]
In 2022, a 518 million years old specimen of C. catenulum was researched and shown an unsegmented head and a brain composed of three separate cephalic parts.[1] However, although "three parts" in this study means prosocerebrum, protocerebrum and deutocerebrum,[1] it is different from earlier studies that referred protocerebrum, deutocerebrum and tritocerebrum as tripartite brain of arthropod, and treated posocerebrum as part of protocerebrum.[5][6]
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