Ainiktozoon

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Ainiktozoon is an enigmatic fossil genus from the Silurian of Scotland. Originally, described as an an early chordate, recent studies suggest that was in fact an arthropod, more precisely a crustacean belonging to the little known extinct class Thylacocephala.

The only discovered species Ainiktozoon loganense is known from a number of specimens from Silurian rocks (Llandovery series) at Lesmahagow in Scotland. Ainiktozoon is Greek for "puzzling animal".

It probably fed by swimming close against flat sea bed and sucking up detritus.

If a predator came near; it may have escaped upwards by violently expelling all the water downwards from its pharynx. Some fossils seem to show what may be a hardened area on the top (bottom on the drawing) of its hump: this may have been to protect the top of its hump if it hit a rock overhang during this escape action.

[edit] External links

• Images of Ainiktozoon (see the files whose names start "ain".)

[edit] References

• Ritchie, A., 1985. Ainiktozoon loganense Scourfield, a protochordate? from the Silurian of Scotland. Alcheringa, 9, 117-142.
• van der Brugghen, W., Schram, F.R. & Martill, D. M. 1997. The fossil Ainiktozoon is an arthropod. Nature 385, 589 - 590 [1]