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Journal of Paleontology

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JURACYCLUS POSIDONIAE N. GEN. AND SP., THE FIRST CYCLOID ARTHROPOD FROM THE JURASSIC

¹ Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Rosenstein 1, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany, <schweigert.smns@naturkundemuseum-bw.de>

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

	INTRODUCTION

 
THE CYCLOIDS represent an enigmatic arthropod group of probably crustacean affinity, occurring mostly in the younger Paleozoic, from the early Carboniferous up to the Late Triassic (Schram et al., 1997). Superficially, cycloids strikingly resemble crabs and were thought to have had a similar lifestyle, becoming extinct when crabs started to radiate. Recently, the existence of a Late Cretaceous cycloid, Maastrichtiocaris rostratus Fraaije et al., 2003, from the Maastrichtian of the Netherlands, proved that cycloids did not go extinct at the end of the Triassic as believed for a long time, but survived much longer, co-occurring with crabs. Due to obvious collecting bias and the incompleteness of the fossil record of arthropods with relatively delicate carapaces in general, neither Jurassic nor Early Cretaceous representatives have been reported hitherto. However, from the Lower Jurassic Posidonienschiefer (‘Posidonia Shale’) of southwestern Germany—famous for its excellent fossil preservation, not only of marine vertebrates and large crinoids living on driftwood, but also many other invertebrate groups (Riegraf et al., 1984; Urlichs et al., 1994)—now a single specimen of a cycloid is recorded and described herein. Although this record helps link the bias between the Triassic and the Late Cretaceous occurrences, the characters of the specimen differ strongly from those of other cycloids, thus requiring the erection of a new genus and species.

In Europe, cycloids are mainly known from the German Triassic (e.g., Meyer, 1838, 1844, 1847; Seebach, 1857; Bill, 1914; Müller, 1955; Trümpy, 1957; Linck, 1961; Meischner, 1963; Zorn, 1971; Oosterink, 1986), and from the Triassic . . . [Full Text of this Article]