Cyathaspis

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. 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.

Cyathaspis
Temporal range: Wenlock to Ludlow
Reconstruction of C. banksii
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Chordata
Class:
Pteraspidomorphi
Order:
Cyathaspidiformes
Family:
Cyathaspidae
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 ludensis is the earliest British vertebrate fossil. It was found in rocks at Leintwardine in Herefordshire, a noted fossil locality.

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


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