The earliest myodocopes: ostracodes from the late Ordovician Soom Shale Lagerstätte of South Africa

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The late Ordovician Soom Shale Lagerstätte of South Africa has yielded Myodoprimigenia fistuca n. gen. and n. sp., the earliest and only known Ordovician occurrence of myodocopes, one of the major groups of ostracodes. M. fistuca is a likely sister group of the Upper Silurian ‘cypridinid’ myodocopes and allied forms. It had a thin, lightly mineralized and flexible shell with microstructures resulting from in vivo calcification processes. It probably fed on cephalopod carrion, thus extending evidence for a carnivorous scavenging lifestyle in ostracodes back by 200 Ma. The species was probably nektobenthic and thus consistent with the notion that the origin of the late Silurian pelagic myodocopes ‐ and therefore of pelagic ostracodes ‐ is to be charted in a benthic to pelagic ecological shift in the group.

This publication has 23 references indexed in Scilit: