The Appendages, Anatomy, and Relationships of TrilobitesRaymond, Percy E. (Percy Edward)
Science
The Appendages, Anatomy, and Relationships of Trilobites
Raymond, Percy E. (Percy Edward)
Trilobites
The second argument, that wings arose from the pleural lobes of
trilobites, is exceedingly weak. Where most fully set forth (1907, p.
157), he suggests that trilobites may occasionally have left the
water, climbed a steep bank or a plant, and then glided back into
their native element, taking advantage of the broad flat shape to make
a comfortable and gentle descent! This sport apparently became so
engaging that the animal tried experiments with flexible wing tips,
eventually got the whole of the pleural lobes in a flexible condition,
and selected those of the second and third thoracic segments for
preservation, while discarding the remainder. The pleural lobes of
trilobites are not only too firmly joined to the axial portion of the
test to be easily transformed into movable organs, but they are
structurally too unlike the veined wings of insects to make the
suggestion of this derivation even worthy of consideration.
Tothill (1916) has recently reinvestigated the possible connection
between insects, chilopods, and trilobites, and, from the early
appearance of the spiracles in the young, came to the conclusion that
the insects were derived from terrestrial animals. He suggested that
they may have come through the chilopods from the trilobites. The
hypothetical ancestor of the insects, as restored by Tothill from the
evidence of embryology and comparative anatomy, is an animal more
easily derived from the Chilopoda than from the Trilobita. Five pairs
of appendages are present on the head, and the trunk is made up of
fourteen similar segments, each with a pair of walking limbs and a
pair of spiracles.
Only the maxillæ and maxillulæ are represented as biramous. If the
ancestor of the Insecta was, as seems possible, tracheate, this fact
alone would rule out the trilobites. Among tracheates, the Chilopoda
are certainly more closely allied to the Insecta than are any other
wingless forms. If the ancestors of the insects were not actually
chilopods, they may have been chilopod-like, and there can be little
doubt that both groups trace to the same stock.
As to the ancestry of the Chilopoda, it is probable that they had the
same origin as the other Arthropoda. Tothill has pointed out that in
the embryo of some chilopods there are rudiments of two pairs of
antennæ and that the two pairs of maxillæ and the maxillipeds are
biramous. This would point rather to the Haplopoda than directly to
the trilobites as possible ancestors, and may explain why the former
vanish so suddenly from the geological record after their brief
appearance in the Middle Cambrian. They may have gone on to the land.
There seem to be no insuperable obstacles to prevent the derivation,
indirectly, of the insects from some trilobite with numerous free
segments, and small pygidium. The antennules and pleural lobes must be
lost, the antennas and trunk limbs modified by loss of exopodites.
Wings and tracheæ must be acquired.
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