Gabreyaspididae

Gabreyaspididae
Temporal range: Early Devonian
Reconstruction of Gabreyaspis
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Phylum:
Class:
Pteraspidomorphi
Subclass:
Order:
(unranked):
Superfamily:
Family:
Gabreyaspididae
Genera
  • Gabreyaspis
  • Prosarctaspis
  • Pelaspis
  • Tareyaspis

Gabreyaspididae is a family of extinct amphiaspidid heterostracan agnathans whose fossils are restricted to Lower Devonian marine strata of Siberia near the Taimyr Peninsula. 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, and differs from amphiaspidoid amphiaspids of Olbiaspididae in that gabreyaspidids' mouths are ventrally positioned, whereas the mouths of olbiaspidids are positioned anteriorly.

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