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Lanarkopterus is a genus of prehistoric eurypterid with one recognised species, Lanarkopterus dolichoschelus. Lanarkopterus was long seen as a species of the closely related Mixopterus, though more complete specimens discovered in the 1960s determined that it differed in several aspects, enough to warrant a separate genus.
Specimens of the genus have been recovered from deposits of Late Silurian age in Scotland.
Størmer (1936)Størmer, L. (1936). Mixopterus dolichoschelus (Laurie MS), a Downtonian eurypterid from Scotland. S umm. Prog. geol. Surv. for 1934, 41-46. described several specimens of Mixopterus from Ludlow epoch deposits of Ringerike, Norway. The specimens referred to Eurypterus dolichoschelus were described in further detail and referred to Mixopterus. An almost complete, but weathered specimen (T. 3357) from the collection of the Geological Survey of Scotland, in Edinburgh, was taken as the holotype of Mixopterus dolichoschelus.
Further specimens discovered during the second half of the twentieth century and ones discovered in several national and university museum collections allowed a full description of the morphology and a more accurate assessment of the taxonomic position of the species. Ritchie (1968) presented evidence that suggested that M. dolichoschelus was not as closely related to the other species of Mixopterus as previously thought and placed it in its own genus within the Mixopteridae, Lanarkopterus.
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