I'd like to highlight a niche paper by Hans Pellmann (2021) that documents branchiopod crustacean aktuo-paläontologie--documenting what happens in the modern world BEFORE fossilization. First, a dried out community of the clam shrimp Limnadia lenticularis (photo b J. Venzlaff). #arthropoda #crustacea #branchiopoda #spinicaudata #conchostraca #taphonomy #fossilization
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A new paper by Poschmann & Schindler 2023 describes specimens of the fossil clam shrimp, Palaeolimnadiopsis obenaueri (Guthörl, 1931) with the impressions of eggs. #arthropoda #crustacea #branchiopoda #paleontology #Palaeontology #fossil #Permian #Germany #spinicaudata

In November, Ralf Werneburg and Jörg Schneider published a new genus and species of notostracan-like crustacean from the late Carboniferous of Germany: Thuringiops nephroides. They rightfully assessed that it probably belongs somewhere on the stem to the kazacharthran lineage (the monophyly of that is another issue entirely). #crustacea #arthropoda #branchiopoda #notostraca #paleontology #palaeontology #newspecies #systematics #germany #carboniferous

A couple of new fossil notostracan-related genera dropped in November, and I am only finding out about it now. sigh
More on this later.
#taxonomy #arthropoda #crustacea #branchiopoda #notostraca #paleontology #palaeontology

A cautionary tale. In 1989, an ostracod worker (Dr. Koen Martens) collected some unique fairy shrimp in South Africa. He passed these on to Dr. Luc Brendonck, who realized that these fairy shrimp were quite unique. They were described as the only member of a new genus, called Rhinobranchipus, with the species name, martensi, honoring the original discoverer. #arthropoda #crustacea #branchiopoda #anostraca #southafrica
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Going back through the images year-by-year, you really get a sense as to when focus stacking started to become widespread. In the 1990s, images were all flat.
Here is a recent honoree, a photo of an anostracan larvae. #arthropoda #crustacea #anostraca #branchiopoda

Just found an artistic reconstruction of the kazacharthran, Almatium (presumably, not identified in the caption), from a Russian volume on Mesozoic Lake Deposits of Mongolia.
#arthropoda #crustacea #branchiopoda #mongolia #paleoart #entomology

On the 30th day of #Crustmas my true love gave to me the bizarre tadpole shrimp-like Panacanthocaris ketmenica Novojilov, 1957. This odd beast is a member of a group called the Kazacharthrans—which seem to represent a central Asian Triassic radiation of weird, notostracan-like branchiopods. Conventionally, they are thought of as the sistergroup of notostracans, together forming a monophyletic clade called the Calmanostraca. #crustacea #arthropoda #branchiopoda
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This seems like an easy case for uniformitarianism. Modern clam shrimp live in ephemeral freshwater bodies, ergo fossil clam shrimp indicate ephemeral bodies of freshwater. Simple! #branchiopoda #paleoecology #paleontology #palaeontology #spinicaudata
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On the 24nd day of #Crustmas my true love gave to me the tadpole shrimp, Triops cancriformis Bosc, 1801. I've been saving this lovely critter for Xmas Eve. . .
Many of you may know T. cancriformis (or the North American, T. longicaudatus) from little kits sold as souvenirs--where you can raise your very own 'Triassic Triops.' No, those eggs did not time travel from the Triassic.
#crustacea #arthropoda #branchiopoda
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One of the things that makes B. raptor remarkable is what it eats. It is a predator; it eats smaller fairy shrimp, chironomid midges, mosquito larvae, cladocerans, copepods, and ostracods. Rogers et al. speculate it could likely handle amphibian larvae if given the change (sounds like it is time for an experiment!). Look at that spiny endopod--that is not for giving hugs! #hugs #fairyshrimp #seamonkey #arthropoda #anostraca #branchiopoda
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On the 11th day of #Crustmas my true love gave to me Ilyocryptus cuneatus Štifter, 1988. Picture from Kotov & Elías-Gutiérrez 2009. I. cuneatus is a small anomopod cladoceran. The genus Ilyocryptus is a relatively common benthic cladoceran genus, but few people look for benthic cladocerans, so Daphnia gets all the love. #crustacea #arthropoda #branchiopoda #cladocera
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How can we understand the evolution of the group with so few characters? Do we just pass over it in silence?
#arthropoda #crustacea #branchiopoda #spinicaudata #fossils #paleontology #palaeontology

I'm going to make #FridayFushunograptids a thing. This week's fushunograptid is Ordestheria multicostata (Chen in Zhang et al., 1976), from the lower Cretaceous of Jilin Province, China.
#branchiopoda #conchostraca #crustacea #arthropoda #clamshrimp

#branchiopoda, #clamshrimp, #spinicaudata, #nauplii
This hashtags scratch an itch that is hard to scratch on Mastodon . . .