Researches on the Visual Organs of the TrilobitesLindström, Gustaf
Science
Researches on the Visual Organs of the Trilobites
Lindström, Gustaf
Trilobites
1. The plurality of the genera living during the Cambrian period were
blind and it was first at the close of that period, in the Olenus
schists, that genera with real visual organs appeared. There may have
been oculate trilobites earlier, as Solenopleura, but we know nothing
of their eyes.
2. The primordial glabellar pleuron which was metamorphosed into a
facial ridge is no visual organ. It is in the Olenidæ nothing but the
elevated line made in the test by the subjacent main trunk of the
circulatory system. It swells out in a node, »palpebral lobe», but not
before the facial suture has been formed. In the genera where there is
no facial suture, there is no node. In the Paradoxidæ where the ridge
is of a different origin, there is no node, though there is a suture.
The four types of eyes in the trilobites have probably succeeded one
another in the following chronological order:
1) with stemmata or ocelli; 2) biconvex or lentiform; 3) prismatic;
4) aggregate. The oldest known representatives for each type are for
1) Harpides rugosus in the Ceratopyge limestone of the Lower Silur.,
for 2) Eurycare, in the Cambrian Olenid schists, division 2, for 3)
Megalaspis, in the Ceratopyge limestone of the Lower Silurian, for
4) Phacops in the Lower gray Orthoceratite limestone. The eyes of
the trilobites show the greatest conformity with those of the recent
Isopoda.
The most perfect eyes amongst all the trilobitic eyes may be those of
the Phacopidæ, which are also geologically the youngest, the least
developed again those of the Proetidæ or rather of the Bumasti. The
great thickness of the cornea in these must have weakened their power
of vision and they had probably only a faint perception of light.
=On the maculæ of the hypostoma.=
We shall now turn our attention to the visual organs which LILJEVALL
discovered on the hypostoma of Bronteus. In doing this, we may bear
in mind, that the genera in which we really have found lenses on the
maculæ are relatively few, but that we shall review the maculæ in all
genera, which we have been able to examine, and try to show that even
most of these may, although in an inferior degree, have acted as visual
organs. At the same time some more details shall be given about the
cephalic eyes for comparing them with the hypostomic ones.
=Acidaspis= MURCH.
The hypostoma is of a peculiar type, deviating from that of the other
genera, squarish or rectangularly transverse, entirely without terrace
lines and no maculæ proper. BARRANDE has given no less than nine
different samples of these hypostomas.
=Acidaspis crenata= EMMR.
(Pl. I figs 1-6.)
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