
Astraspis
Sign in to saveAstraspis ('star shield') is an extinct, monotypic genus of primitive jawless fish from the Ordovician of Central North America including the Harding Sandstone of Colorado and Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. It is also known from Bolivia. It is related to other Ordovician fishes, such as the South American Sacabambaspis, and the Australian Arandaspis.
In the Vinony graph
Vinony's link graph records 27 inbound references to Astraspis, and connects out to Agnatha, Pteraspidomorphi and Arandaspida.
It is catalogued under topics including Fossils of Bolivia, Fossil taxa described in 1892 and Late Ordovician animals.
Vinony links it to 11 Wikipedia language editions.
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- Astraspis desiderata.jpg
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Astraspis ('star shield') is an extinct, monotypic genus of primitive jawless fish from the Ordovician of Central North America including the Harding Sandstone of Colorado and Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. It is also known from Bolivia. It is related to other Ordovician fishes, such as the South American Sacabambaspis, and the Australian Arandaspis.
==Description== left|thumb|Astraspis desiderata Nearly complete fossils suggest the living animals were about in length. The body had a mobile tail covered with small protective plate-like scales of less than and a forebody covered with plate-like scales larger than . The specimen from North America (described by Sansom et al., 1997) had relatively large, laterally-positioned eyes and a series of eight gill openings on each side. The specimen was generally oval in cross-section. The protective bony plates covering the animal were composed of aspidin (chemically similar to a modern shark's teeth), covered by tubercles composed of dentine. It is from these tubercles (which are generally star-shaped) that the name "Astraspis" (literally "star-shield") is derived. The histology of Astraspis desiderata was unique. Its hard tissues were made up of irregular soft tissue gaps and a basal component of spongy aspidin with extensive trabeculae. As is typical of Astraspis, the individual tubercles were composed of dentine with an enameloid cover, which contains a high density of parallel, fine-calibrated tapered tubules.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Astraspis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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