In the adult Petromyzon the trigeminal nerve innervates specially a
massive suctorial apparatus, by means of which it holds on to other
fishes, or to stones in the bottom of the stream. There is here no
apparent sign of appendages. Very great, however, is the difference in
the oral chamber of Ammocoetes; here there is no sign of any suctorial
apparatus, but instead, a system of tentacles, together with the remains
of the septum or velum, which originally closed off the oral from the
respiratory chamber. These tentacles are the last remnants of the
original foremost prosomatic appendages of the palæostracan ancestor.
Like the lateral eyes they do not develop until the transformation comes,
but during the whole larval condition their musculature remains in an
embryonic condition, and then from these embryonic muscles the whole
massive musculature of the suctorial apparatus develops; a sucking
apparatus derived from the modification of appendages, as so frequently
occurs in the arthropods.
The study of Ammocoetes indicates that the velum and lower lip correspond
to the metastoma of the Eurypterid, _i.e._ the chilaria of Limulus, while
the large ventral pair of tentacles, called the tongue, correspond to the
ectognaths of the Eurypterids, and probably to the oar-like appendages of
Pterichthys and Bothriolepis. From these two splanchnic segments the
suctorial apparatus in the main arises; the motor supply of these two
segments forms the mass of the trigeminal nerve-supply, and the nerves
supplying them, the velar nerve and the tongue-nerve, are markedly
separate from the rest of the trigeminal nerve.
The rest of the tentacles present much less the sign of independent
segments. In their nerves, their muco-cartilaginous skeleton, and their
rudimentary muscles, they indicate a concentration and amalgamation, such
as might be expected from the concentrated endognaths. The continuation
of the dwindling process, already initiated in the Eurypterid, would
easily result in the tentacles of Ammocoetes.
The nasal tube of Ammocoetes, which originates in the hypophysial tube,
corresponds absolutely in position and in its original structure, to the
olfactory tube of a scorpion-like animal. From this homology two
conclusions of importance follow: (1) the old mouth, or palæostoma, of
the vertebrate was situated at the end of this tube, therefore, at the
termination of the infundibulum; (2) the upper lip, which by its growth,
brings the olfactory tube from a ventral to a dorsal position, was
originally formed by the foremost sternites or endostoma, or else by the
sterno-coxal processes of the second pair of prosomatic appendages of the
palæostracan ancestor.
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