Arandaspis Temporal range: Early Ordovician
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Fossil of Arandaspis prionotolepis from Natural History Museum in London | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Infraphylum: | Agnatha |
Class: | †Pteraspidomorphi |
Order: | †Arandaspidiformes |
Family: | †Arandaspididae |
Genus: | †Arandaspis Ritchie & Gilbert-Tomlinson, 1977 |
Type species | |
†Arandaspis prionotolepis Ritchie & Gilbert-Tomlinson, 1977
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Species[1] | |
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Arandaspis prionotolepis is an extinct species of jawless fish that lived in the Ordovician period, about 480 to 470 million years ago. Its remains were found in the Stairway Sandstone near Alice Springs, Australia in 1959, but it was not determined that they were the oldest known vertebrates until the late 1960s. Arandaspis is named after a local Indigenous Australian people, the Aranda (now currently called Arrernte).