Gabreyaspididae

Gabreyaspididae
Temporal range: Early Devonian
Reconstruction of Gabreyaspis
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Chordata
Class:
Pteraspidomorphi
Subclass:
Heterostraci
Order:
Cyathaspidiformes
(unranked):
Amphiaspidida
Superfamily:
Amphiaspidoidei
Family:
Gabreyaspididae
Genera

Gabreyaspididae is a family of extinct amphiaspidid heterostracan agnathans whose fossils are restricted to Lower Devonian marine strata of Siberia near the Taimyr Peninsula.[1] In life, all amphiaspidids are thought to be benthic animals that lived most of their lives mostly buried in the sediment of a series of hypersaline lagoons. Amphiaspids are easily distinguished from other heterostracans in that all of the plates of the cephalothoracic armor are fused into a single, muff-like unit, so that the forebody of the living animal would have looked, in the case of gabreyaspidids, vaguely like a horseshoe crab with a pair of small, or degenerated eyes, with each flanked by a preorbital opening, and a simple, slit-like mouth positioned slightly ventrally.

Gabreyaspidids differ from the amphiaspidoid amphiaspids of Amphiaspididae primarily due to ornamentation unique to each family,[1] and differs from amphiaspidoid amphiaspids of Olbiaspididae in that gabreyaspidids' mouths are ventrally positioned, whereas the mouths of olbiaspidids are positioned anteriorly.

  1. ^ a b Novitskaya, Larisse. Les amphiaspides (Heterostraci) du Devonien de la Siberie. Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1971.