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 most striking characteristics of the appendages are as follows:
the antennules are long, and turn backward instead of forward; none
of the limbs projects beyond the margin of the dorsal test; the
exopodites extend beyond the endopodites, reaching very nearly to the
margin of the test; the endopodites are not stretched out at right
angles to the axis, but the first three segments have a forward and
outward direction as in _Triarthrus_, while the last four turn back
abruptly so that they are parallel to the axis; the limbs at the
anterior end of the thorax are much more powerful than the others; the
dactylopodites of the endopodites show a fringe of setæ instead of
three spines as in _Triarthrus_ and _Neolenus_. All these would, as
Beecher has already suggested, seem to be adaptations to a burrowing
habit of life, the antennules being turned backward and the other
appendages kept within the shelter of the dorsal test in order to
protect them, and the anterior endopodites enlarged and equipped with
extra spines to make them more efficient digging and pushing organs.
_Restoration of Cryptolithus._
(Text fig. 20.)
It should be definitely understood that the present figure is a
restoration and not a drawing of a specimen, and that there are many
points in the morphology of _Cryptolithus_ about which no information
is available, especially about the appendages under the central
portion of the cephalon. The information afforded by all the figures
published in this memoir is combined here. As gnathites are preserved
on none of the specimens, those represented in the figure are purely
conventional.
A person who is acquainted only with _Cryptolithus_ preserved in
shale, or with figures, usually has a very erroneous idea of the
fringe It is not a flat border spread out around the front of the
head, but stands at an angle about 45 in uncrushed specimens of most
species. When viewed from the lower side, there is a single outer,
concentric row of the cup-shaped depressions, bounded within by a
prominent girder. This row is in an approximately horizontal plane,
while the remainder of the doublure of the fringe rises steeply into
the hollow of the cephalon. Since the front of the hypostoma is
attached to this doublure, it stands high up within the vault and
under the glabella. Two specimens, Nos. 231 and 233, show something of
the hypostoma, and they are the only ones known of any American
trinucleid. That of specimen 233, the better preserved, is very small,
straight across the front, and oval behind. It seems that it is
abnormally small in this specimen and I should not be surprised if in
other specimens it should be found to be larger.
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