Researches on the Visual Organs of the TrilobitesLindström, Gustaf
Science
Researches on the Visual Organs of the Trilobites
Lindström, Gustaf
Trilobites
The hypostoma, figured pl. III fig. 1, is broadly tongueshaped, with a
short, blunt, triangular wing on each side of the anterior margin. The
exterior side is nearly completely occupied by a single large field,
which is convex and decorated by sparse terrace lines. Below this a
smooth, nearly even plane, reaching to the inferior, elevated border
of the hypostoma. The two tubercular macula' are situated exactly on
the boundary line between the convex and the plane field. They are
elongately ovate, pointed outwards, rounded inwards, with smooth and
glossy surface. That portion, on which in the species of Bronteus
the granular spot rests, is transversally wrinkled by some faintly
elevated, sigmoid lines (fig. 2). It would have been of great interest
to investigate the interior structure of these curious maculæ, but the
scarcity of the material has prevented our doing so.
The other hypostoma, pl. III fig. 3-5, is larger and has the terrace
lines more distantiated and forming more open curves, but for the rest
it is of the same shape as the smaller, so that we may not ascribe
these small deviations to a specific difference. The maculæ are more
elongated, narrow, curved tubercles, thus differing from the next
preceding. A section running through its left tubercle does not show
any structure, but the shell of the maculæ is extremely thin, thus
contrasting strongly with the surrounding thicker shell, fig. 4 _a_.
The cephalic eye, again, remaining on the free cheek found in the same
piece of limestone and probably belonging to the same specimen, has its
surface well preserved and exhibits semiglobular lenses in low relief,
fig. 5.
=Calymmene= BRONGN.
In the following species of this genus hypostomic tubercles have
formerly been recorded.
_Cal. Blumenbachi_ SALTER Monogr. pl. 8, fig. 9. The identity of the
species is dubious.
_Cal. duplicata_ SALTER Mon. pl. 9, fig. 22. The tubercles rather more
linear and approximated than in the subsequent. SALTER calls them »two
small transverse lobes ... forming a nearly continuous ridge».
_Cal. tuberculata_ ANGEL. Tab. XIX fig. 5 c from the inside.
It is remarkable that the eyes or that part of them where the cornea
and the lenses should be found, has been destroyed and entirely lost in
all specimens of the Calymmene known to us, many hundreds having been
searched and every one with a lacuna on that spot. It must have been
of an excessive thinness. We know only of one instance, the Bohemian
Calym. Arago, in which BARRANDE has seen the eye intact and provided
with a small number of about eleven sphærical lenses.
=Calymmene intermedia= LDM.
Pl. III figs. 6, 7.
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