Devonian terrestrial arthropods from Gondwana

Gregory D. Edgecombe ()
Additional contact information
Gregory D. Edgecombe: Centre for Evolutionary Research, Australian Museum, 6 College Street, Sydney South

Nature, 1998, vol. 394, issue 6689, 172-175

Abstract: Abstract The origin of the most diverse terrestrial animal group, Atelocerata (myriapods and hexapods), is obscured by an incomplete fossil record1. Early (Silurian and Devonian) body fossils of terrestrial arthropods have been found only in Laurussia, with key sites in Britain and eastern North America2,3,4,5. Although trace fossil assemblages indicate the presence of various arthropods on land in Australia in the Silurian Period6, definite terrestrial arthropods have not been discovered in mid-Palaeozoic stages of the southern continents. Here I describe the first atelocerates from the Devonian stages of Gondwana; these are perhaps the earliest known remains of Australian land animals. The fossils comprise two closely related myriapod species of the genus Maldybulakia, first identified from Kazakhstan7,8. They add substantially to our knowledge of the anatomy of this problematic arthropod, and illustrate the widespread distribution of parts of the Devonian terrestrial fauna. A clade including Maldybulakia is distinct within the Myriapoda at a high taxonomic level. The existence of Maldybulakia and the extinct classes Arthropleuridea and Kampecarida9, with centipedes and millipedes, indicates the high class-level diversity of myriapods in the Devonian.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/BF28156 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:394:y:1998:i:6689:d:10.1038_28156

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/28156

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().