Captopodus is an extinct genus of stem-mandibulate known from the Early Devonian. This creature was described in 2012 from four fossils found in the Hunsrück Slate, an early Devonian lagerstätten in Germany that represents one of the few marine sites from the Devonian with soft tissue preservation.[1][2]
| Captopodus Temporal range: Latest Pragian - Emsian
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Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Genus: | †Captopodus Kühl & Rust, 2012 |
| Species: | †C. poschmanni
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| Binomial name | |
| †Captopodus poschmanni Kühl & Rust, 2012
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Description
editCaptopodus is a vermiform (worm-like) arthropod, with over 66 trunk segments each containing a biramous limb pair, with the final segment containing a caudal furca. The head region contains two pairs of appendages, one being antennae, and the other resembling the grasping legs of thylacocephalans. It also has cupola-like structures, the function of which is unknown. The animal measures five to ten centimetres long. It is also very similar to, and probably related to the animal Acheronauta, from the Waukesha Biota.[1][3]
Ecology
editCaptopodus seems to have been a scavenger or ambush predator, based on thylacocephalans such as Dollocaris.
Etymology
editCaptopodus derives from the words "capto" ("grasp") and "podus" ("appendage"). The species name poschmanni derives from Markus Poschmann, who has done preparatory and scientific work on a number of Hunsrück Slate animals.[1]
Classification
editWhen first described in 2012, C. poschmanni was regarded as a basal stem-arthropod, however more recent studies have placed it specifically as a stem-mandibulate. In 2022 when describing Acheronauta, C. poschmanni was placed in a clade formed alongside A. stimulapis and the thylacocephalans as basal mandibulates. The cladogram below shows the position of C. poschmanni in relation to other arthropods based on the findings of Pulsipher et al. (2022).[1][3]
| Arthropoda |
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References
edit- ^ a b c d Kühl, Gabriele (28 June 2012). "Captopodus poschmanni gen. et sp. nov. a new stem-group arthropod from the Lower Devonian Hunsrück Slate (Germany)". Arthropod Structure & Development. doi:10.1016/j.asd.2012.06.004.
- ^ Butterfield, Nicholas J. (2003). "Exceptional Fossil Preservation and the Cambrian Explosion". Integrative and Comparative Biology. 43 (1): 166–177. doi:10.1093/icb/43.1.166. PMID 21680421.
- ^ a b Pulsipher, M. A.; Anderson, E. P.; Wright, L. S.; Kluessendorf, J.; Mikulic, D. G.; Schiffbauer, J. D. (2022). "Description of Acheronauta gen. nov., a possible mandibulate from the Silurian Waukesha Lagerstätte, Wisconsin, USA". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 20 (1). 2109216. doi:10.1080/14772019.2022.2109216. S2CID 252839113.