Systematics: Archosauromorpha Tanystropheidae
September 6, 2021
References:
Ji, C., Tintori, A., Jiang, D., & Motani, R. (2017). New species of Thylacocephala (Arthropoda) from the Spathian (Lower Triassic) of Chaohu, Anhui Province of China. PalZ, 91(2), 171-184.
This odd-looking armored fish from the Middle Devonian of Scotland was probably a bottom feeder. It was originally named Pterichthys milleri but the generic name was preoccupied.
Horseshoe crabs first appeared in the fossil record during the Late Ordovician period and have hardly changed since then. Albalimulus (the name combines the Gaelic name of Great Britain, Alba, with the genus name of the extant horseshoe crab, Limulus) was a small one from the Early Carboniferous of Scotland, possibly the earliest member of the modern Limulidae family. It is known from the part and counterpart of a single fossil missing the telson (terminal appendage of the carapace).
Cloudina were tiny organisms with a worldwide distribution that were among the first animals with mineralized skeletons to appear in the fossil record. The fossils consist of a series of stacked vase-like tubes. Recent tomographic analyses of specimens from the Wood Canyon Formation of Nevada, USA, indicate the presence of a a digestive tract within the tube, the earliest known evidence of a gut in the fossil record. The representation of the living organism here is hypothetical.