Luprisca incuba

Luprisca incuba is an extinct species of ostracod — a group related to crabs, shrimps and lobsters. It was described as a new species in 2014, following discovery and analysis of fossilised specimens in mudstone rocks from New York State, USA. A team of researchers from the universities of Yale and Kansas, Oxford and the Japan Agency of Marine Science and Technology made the discovery.^[1]

Etymology

Estimated to be about 450 million years old, the fossil was obtained with the eggs fossilized with the parent.

The species was named after Lucina, the goddess of childbirth in Roman mythology, and incuba, implying the mother was incubating her eggs.^[2]

Description

The recently discovered and remarkably well-preserved fossils are about two to three millimeters long, and suggested the animal was intact with a shell along with the delicate parts of limbs and embryos within the shell. The fossil was preserved in pyrite and was examined using X-Ray and CT Scan techniques.^[3]

Habitat and behaviour

Ostracods are generally very small-sized crustaceans, that includes more than 20,000 species living today, living in smallest to the largest water bodies. This species was discovered in the mudstone rocks from New York State, from a rock layer called the Lorraine Group. The discovery was said to be the earliest evidence for parental care in the fossils of small shrimp-like creatures that lived in the Ordovician era.

“The mother kept the eggs and the hatchlings in brooding pouches within her body until the young ones were big enough to go out on their own,” David Siveter, professor of geology at the University of Leceister ^[4] in the UK who led the study, told The Telegraph India. A research paper by Siveter and his colleagues describing the ostracod fossils was published in the journal Current Biology.^[5]

References