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Cyathaspis

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Cyathaspis
Temporal range: Wenlock to Ludlow
Reconstruction of C. banksii
Scientific classification
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Genus:
Cyathaspis

Lankester
Type species
Pteraspis banksii
Huxley and Salter, 1856
Species
  • C. acadica (Matthew 1886)
  • C. banksii (Huxley & Salter 1856)
  • C. barroisi (Leriche 1906)
  • C. lindstromi Kiaer & Heintz 1935
  • C. ludensis
  • C. macculloughi (Woodward 1891)

Cyathaspis is the type genus of the heterostracan order Cyathaspidiformes.[1] Fossils are found in late Silurian strata in the Cunningham Creek Formation, New Brunswick, Canada and Europe, especially in the Downton Castle Sandstone of Great Britain and Gotland, Sweden.[citation needed] The living animal would have looked superficially like a tadpole, albeit covered in bony plates composed of the tissue aspidine, which is unique to heterostracan armor.[citation needed]

Cyathaspis ludensis is the earliest British vertebrate fossil.[citation needed] It was found in rocks at Leintwardine in Herefordshire, a noted fossil locality.[citation needed]

References

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  1. ^ Matthew, George Frederic (1888). On Some Remarkable Organisms of the Silunian and Devonian Rocks in Southern New Brunswick. pp. 52–54.