Researches on the Visual Organs of the Trilobites — John Shaqi
Researches on the Visual Organs of the TrilobitesLindström, Gustaf
Science
Researches on the Visual Organs of the Trilobites
Lindström, Gustaf
Trilobites
Of the groups, in which JOH:S MÜLLER[39] long ago classified the
Crustacean eyes, his second »Hauptgruppe» (»Aggregate von einfachen
linsenhaften Augen») and the fourth »zusammengesetzten Augen ...
facettirte Hornhaut» the former corresponds with my third and the
latter with my two first divisions. In so far as the cornea and its
facets or lenses are to be regarded, there is the greatest analogy with
the Isopoda. In vertical sections of Sphæroma we have the same sort of
elongated, flattened biconvex lenses as in Sphærophthalmus and others.
Since GRENACHER and EXNER and others have published their excellent
works on the eyes of the Arthropoda, there can be no foundation for
speaking of the resemblance of the trilobitic eye with that of Limulus,
as this genus stands completely isolated amongst all Arthropoda in that
respect. There is, as stated above, a certain resemblance between the
cornea of Peltura and that of Limulus, but this is not yet ripe for a
discussion. Nor is there any evidence for correlating the eyes of the
trilobites with the eyes of the Phyllopoda. BERNARD thinks that the
so called eye of the Paradoxidæ has been formed upon the same plan as
that of Apus. There is nothing to prove this hypothesis that the facial
ridge or any part of it ever had been a visual organ, and the evidence
at hand rather tends in a contrary direction.
[Footnote 39: In Merkels Archiv 1829 p. 46 and in Treviranus
Zeitschrift für Physiologie Bd IV p. 97.]
There are signs of long physiological and anatomical efforts to prepare
the development of the eyes on the free cheek, as revealed through the
long series of blind trilobites. A system of radiating blood vessels,
similar to those described above as covering the inside of the head
in some older genera, all issuing from the scallop in the free cheek,
where later the eye had to find its place, have left their stamp,
their mark on the surface of the free cheek. They attest the great
vital activity which was so intense at the point were the eye was to
be formed. We give the figures of two such cheeks of different types.
One from Parabolina spinulosa (pl. V fig. 31) is the more common, where
six or more isolated trunks radiate from the semilunar ridge round the
indenture and subdivide in branchlets which cease near the lateral
margin of the cheek. It may be that it is an annular vessel near the
indenture that feeds them all and that this probably is in connection
with the great central circulatory system. In Olenus (pl. V fig. 29)
the vessels are partly anastomosing and form a reticulate system and
they are studded with minute wartlets. Another sign, which may be taken
as a preparation, is the elevated rim around the scallop, which is so
prominent in several of the Cambrian genera, but which does not embrace
any facet bearing cornea.
From what has been stated above the following conclusions have been
arrived at.
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