Odaraia

Odaraia alata
Temporal range: Cambrian Stage 3–Middle Cambrian
Fossil
Reconstruction
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Crustacea
Class: Malacostraca (?)
Order: †Canadaspidida
Family: †Odaraiidae
Simonetta & Delle Cave, 1975
Genus: †Odaraia
Walcott, 1912
Species: †O. alata
Binomial name
†Odaraia alata
Walcott, 1912

Odaraia is a genus of crustacean arthropod from the Middle Cambrian. Its fossils, which reach 15 centimetres (5.9 in) in length,[1] have been found in the Burgess Shale in British Columbia, Canada. 217 specimens of Odaraia alata are known from the Greater Phyllopod Bed, where they comprise 0.41% of the community.[2]

Odaraia bore a large pair of eyes at the front of its body,[1] and may have had two smaller eyes in between.[3] It had a tubular body with at least 45 pairs of biramous limbs, and its tail had three fins – two horizontal, one vertical – which were used to stabilise the animal as it swam on its back.[1]

Further reading

  • Simon Conway Morris (1997). The Crucible of Creation: the Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-286202-0.
  • Hou Xian-Guang, Richard J. Aldridge, Jan Bergström, David J. Siveter & Feng Xiang-Hong (2004). The Cambrian Fossils of Chengjiang, China: the Flowering of Early Animal Life. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4051-0673-3.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 D. E. G. Briggs (1981). "The arthropod Odaraia alata Walcott, Middle Cambrian, Burgess Shale, British Columbia". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 291 (1056): 541–582. Bibcode:1981RSPTB.291..541B. doi:10.1098/rstb.1981.0007. JSTOR 2395403.
  2. ↑ Jean-Bernard Caron & Donald A. Jackson (2006). "Taphonomy of the Greater Phyllopod Bed community, Burgess Shale". PALAIOS 21 (5): 451–465. doi:10.2110/palo.2003.P05-070R.
  3. ↑ Graham E. Budd (2008). "Head structure in upper stem-group euarthropods". Palaeontology 51 (3): 561–573. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00752.x.

External links