Anomalocarididae

Anomalocarididae
Anomalocaris canadensis
Lenisicaris lupata
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Order:	†Radiodonta
Family:	†Anomalocarididae Raymond, 1935
Genera
† Anomalocaris † Lenisicaris † Shucaris?

Anomalocarididae^[1] (occasionally mis-spelt Anomalocaridae^[2]) is an extinct family of Cambrian radiodonts, a group of stem-group arthropods.^[3][4]

Around 1990s and early 2010s, Anomalocarididae included all radiodont species, hence the previous equivalent of the common name "anomalocaridid" to the whole Radiodonta.^[5] This is no longer the case after the revision done by Vinther et al. 2014,^[3] as Anomalocarididae restricted to only Anomalocaris and, if any, a few of closely related genera since then. Wu et al. 2021 accepted only Anomalocaris (excluding "A." saron, "A." kunmingensis and "A." briggsi) and Lenisicaris as the member of Anomalocarididae,^[4] while Paranomalocaris is questionably included by some studies as well.^[6][7][8] Since then, other species labeled under the Anomalocaris genus, like ''A.'' saron have been reassigned to their own genus (like in the case of ''A.'' saron being redescribed as Innovatiocaris).^[9]

Anomalocarididae distinguished from the similar family Amplectobeluidae (e.g. Amplectobelua, Lyrarapax) by the presence of triradial oral cone^[10] and non-hypertrophied first distal endite.^[4] Compared to Hurdiidae and Tamisiocarididae, this two radiodont families shared a lot of characters (i.e. alternated endite length;^[11] streamlined body;^[12] small head with ovoid sclerites;^[13][14] well-developed swimming flaps;^[12][13][15] caudal furcae;^[12] raptorial predatory lifestyle^[16][14][11]) and forming a clade in multiple phylogenetic analysis.^{[3][6][16][7][11]}