Arandaspis is an extinction genus of Agnatha that lived in the Ordovician period, about 480 to 470 million years ago. Its remains were found in the Stairway Sandstone near Alice Springs, Australia in 1959, but it was not determined that they were the oldest known vertebrates until the late 1960s. Arandaspis is named after a local Indigenous Australian people, the Aranda (now currently called Arrernte people).
Description
Arandaspis is estimated to reach around long, with a body covered in rows of knobbly armoured
. The front of the body and the head were protected by hard plates with openings for the eyes, nostrils and
. It probably was a
filter-feeder. The morphology of its trunk and tail is unknown.
According to comparisons with other early
ostracoderms, it would have lacked paired fins and the
caudal fin would be of a simple shape,
although another arandaspid
Sacabambaspis had a tail consisting of dorsal and ventral webs and an elongated notochordal lobe.
See also
External links
