N. Jb. Geol. Paläont. Abh.
Stuttgart,
www.schweizerbart.de E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, Germany
DOI:
New finding of Cyclida (Crustacea) from Mississippian and
not-cyclidan from Permian of Russia
Eduard V. Mychko, Alexander S. Alekseev, Elena L. Zaytseva, Carrie E. Schweitzer, and
Rodney M. Feldmann
With 5 figures
Abstract: A new genus and species of cyclidan Magnitocyclus struveae gen. et sp. nov., from the
Mississippian of the Urals is described and illustrated. It is the frst reliable record of a cyclidan in the
Upper Viséan – Lower Serpukhovian of Russia. Petschorocaris kozhimensis, from the Permian of the
Pechora Coal Basin (Russia), is not a cyclidan but is apparently the mold of a patella-like gastropod
shell.
Key words: Crustacea, Cyclida, Carboniferous, Mississippian, Permian, Russia.
305/1 (2022), 75–85
July 2022
Article
© 2022
10.1127/njgpa/2022/1077 0077-7749/2022/1077 $ 2.75
1. Introduction
Cyclidans are enigmatic, extinct crustaceans that had
a crab-like carapace, long before the origin of true
crabs. The frst cyclidans appeared in the Early Car-
boniferous, survived the Great Permian extinction, and
existed until the end of the Late Cretaceous (Maas-
trichtian). The specifc structure of the carapace, a pair
of antennal structures, number of legs, markedly re-
duced abdomen and a horseshoe-shaped array of gill
flaments do not support cyclidans being assigned to
a previously defned higher taxon (subclass or infra-
class) of Crustacea. Therefore, like many previous au-
thors, we consider cyclidans to be in the order Cyclida
Schram, Vonk & Hof , 1997, within the superclass
Multicrustacea Regier et al., 2010.
The earliest recognition of cyclidans was in the frst
half of the 19
th
century. Currently, the order Cyclida
includes 6 families, 27 genera and 53 species. Fossils
of cyclidans are sporadic and rare, and there were no
general studies up until recently. Interest in these ex-
tinct crustaceans has erupted, a general morphology
and terminology was developed to describe cyclidans
(Feldmann & Schweitzer 2019), and then a detailed
revision of Cyclida (Schweitzer et al. 2020) was con-
ducted.
Remains of cyclidans are known from Europe,
Asia, North America, and Madagascar. In the terri-
tory of Russia, specimens of cyclidans are very rare
and confned to the Middle and Southern Urals. They
are represented by Prolatcyclus kindzadza Mychko
et al., 2019, from the Viséan of the Orenburg Region,
Ambocyclus capidulum (Chernyshev , 1933) from the
Serpukhovian of the Sverdlovsk Region, Uralocyclus
miloradovitchi (Kramarenko, 1961) from the As-
selian of the Chelyabinsk Region, and Skuinocyclus
juliae Mychko & Alekseev , 2018 from the Asselian
of the Bashkortostan. There are records in various
works about other rare fndings of Russian cyclidans,
but without details and descriptions (Mychko et al.
2019: 81). Therefore, any new discoveries of these
fossils are extremely important for understanding their
evolutionary history and paleobiogeography.
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