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
Sections of the eyes elucidate the structure, which partially is
obscure in other species of Bronteus. There is a thin membranous
coating covering the subjacent well formed lenses (fig. 8). When this
membrane in some instances has been peeled off the lenses lie bare
(fig. 9). These have a dark nucleus and in some instances it seems
as if there were two. In a vertical section they look spheroidal, in
a horizontal section again they are polyedric, especially when taken
somewhat below the surface or near the middle line (fig. 6). In fig. 7,
some lenses are delineated in a horizontal section, highly magnified
and the corallian appearance is evident. The lenses are well separated
by distinct lines, and from their inner tubes whitish reticulations
radiate towards the centre.
If we now compare these sections, where the lenses are so distinctly
seen, with the more obscure sections of other Brontei, it is evident
that the dark points in them are nothing but transformed and
deteriorated centres of the lenses. In Br. platyactin they are a little
more distinct than in the other species. And it is with these that the
granulated spots on the maculæ of the hypostoma are most concordant.
=Bronteus= sp. indet.
Pl. II figs. 28-30.
This species, of which only the hypostoma is known, found at Lansa,
Gotland, is likely, to judge by that, to be nearly related to Br.
polyactin. The shape of this hypostoma is exactly the same and the
maculæ are placed in the same position, but they are larger, a little
sunk on the blind surface and the group of the lenses is different. Its
superior margin forms an ingoing arch and the lenses themselves are not
convex, but rounded or slightly polyedric, and separated through thick
interspaces.
=Bumastus= MURCHISON.
The only recorded hypostoma with maculæ belongs to B. insignis HALL
as described by SALTER Monogr. p. 208 pl. 27 fig. 7. He says: »A
pair of compressed tubercles occurs at the lower third: they are
transverse-ovate, and more than their own diameter apart.» This is
nearly in concordance with what is seen on the species to be described
below.
Although it can in reality be said that the species of Bumastus are
the most common of all trilobites in the Silurium of Gotland, in so
far that their head pieces and pygidia are met with everywhere in the
limestone rocks of the island, the find of entire specimens or of
detached hypostomas is amongst the rarest events when collecting there
and amongst thousands of fragments, in several places entirely filling
large portions of the limestone rock, there have in the Swedish State
museum been acquired only three or four hypostomas, which we are now
going to describe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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