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| Odaraia Fossil range: Middle Cambrian |
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Odaraia is a genus of crustacean arthropod from the Middle Cambrian. Its fossils, which reach 15cm in length,1 have been found in the Burgess Shale in British Columbia, Canada.
It bore a large pair of eyes at the front of its body,1 and may have had two smaller eyes in between.2 It had a tubular body with at least 45 pairs of biramous limbs, and its tail had three fins - two horizontal, one vertical - which were used to stabilise the animal as it swam on its back.1
Odaria probably captured small swimming animals in its shell.
Further reading
- Conway Morris, S. (1997). The Crucible of Creation: the Burgess Shale and the rise of animals. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0–19–286202–2.
- The Cambrian Fossils of Chengjiang, China: The Flowering of Early Animal Life by Xian-Guang Hou, Richard J. Aldridge, Jan Bergstrom, and David J. Siveter
External links
- Odaraia in the Paleobiology Database
References
- ^ a b c Briggs, D. E. G. (1981), "The Arthropod Odaraia alata Walcott, Middle Cambrian, Burgess Shale, British Columbia", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 291 (1056): 541–582, doi:, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981RSPTB.291..541B
- ^ Budd, G. E. (2008), Palaeontology (Blackwell Synergy), doi:, http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00752.x
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