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Phacops
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Phacops is a genus of trilobites in the order Phacopida, family Phacopidae, that lived in Europe, northwestern Africa, North and South America and China from the Late Ordovician until the very end of the Devonian, with a broader time range described from the Late Ordovician. It was a rounded animal, with a globose head and large eyes, and probably fed on detritus. Phacops is often found rolled up ("volvation"), a biological defense mechanism that is widespread among smaller trilobites but further perfected in this genus.

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Encyclopedic overview

7 sections
Contents
  • Description
  • Camouflage
  • Taxonomy
  • Species
  • Species previously assigned to ''Phacops''
  • References
  • External links

Phacops is a genus of trilobites in the order Phacopida, family Phacopidae, that lived in Europe, northwestern Africa, North and South America and China from the Late Ordovician until the very end of the Devonian, with a broader time range described from the Late Ordovician. It was a rounded animal, with a globose head and large eyes, and probably fed on detritus. Phacops is often found rolled up ("volvation"), a biological defense mechanism that is widespread among smaller trilobites but further perfected in this genus.

== Description == Like in all sighted Phacopina, the eyes of Phacops are compounded of very large, separately set lenses without a common cornea (so called schizochroal eyes), and like almost all other Phacopina, the articulate mid-length part of the body (or thorax) in Phacops has 11 segments.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Phacops” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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