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
It is remarkable that some of the Conocoryphidæ have an imperfect
facial ridge, to be compared with the commenced one in Sao BARR. I (pl.
7 fig. 9). So the American Con. trilineata and reticulate. WALCOTT U.
S. Geol. Survey 10th Rep. pt. I, pl. XCV f. 5 & 6. It is, as it were,
arrested in the development and these adult trilobites had stopped,
where the larva of Sao was proceeding in its second stage. They are
the forerunners of the blind trilobites with facial suture, belonging
to the third group. It needs scarcely be mentioned that the genera now
enumerated have hardly anything in common, beside the general character
of the head, and that real affinity exists only between Agnostus and
Microdiscus, and probably also between Conocoryphe, Ctenocephalus and
Elyx.
BEECHER[2] asserts that there is a suture in Agnostus, but in vain
we have searched for it in numerous well preserved specimens and Dr
HOLM also denies its presence. Nor are there any signs of closed up
sutures, which also could not possibly be expected in so early a stage
of evolution. It may then be taken as well settled that a fundamental
character in these the oldest[3] of all known trilobites is the total
want of a facial suture and a compactness of the whole head shield
which later is broken up in several parts through the disjunction
of the free cheeks. In the Lower Silurian formation there are a few
genera sharing in the same structure of the head shield, though by no
means else related. Such are Dindymene, Areia, Carmon and in the U.
Silurian Cromus. The two species forming BARRANDE'S genus Dindymene are
so dissimilar that Dind. Friderici Augusti had better to be removed
to a new genus and the first described one to be retained as type of
the genus Dindymene. The same is the case with Carmon, where the type
species C. mutilus is blind and without free cheeks while the other
species, known only by its fixed cheeks and glabella is one of the
Olenidæ.
[Footnote 2: Nat. Classification of the Trilobites, p. 183.]
[Footnote 3: Oldest in that sense that they are the descendants of an
archaic precambrian stock, the chief characteristics of which they have
retained in the main unchanged and persisting long ages after the close
of the Cambrian times, some, as Agnostus, continuing high up in the
Lower Silurian.]
=II. Blind trilobites with facial ridge.=
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