Eodiscidae is a family of

agnostid Agnostidae is a family of Agnostida trilobites. Like all Agnostina, they were eyeless and bore only two thoracic segments. They ranged in benthic waters across the globe from 508 to 461 million years ago, containing the following genera, among o ...

trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three lobes") are extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest-known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the At ...

s that lived during the final Lower Cambrian (late Toyonian) and the Middle Cambrian. They are small or very small, and have a thorax of two or three segments. Eodiscidae includes nine genera (see box).

Taxonomy

The Eodiscids probably descended from the agnostids of family

Yukoniidae Yukoniidae S. Zhang, 1980 'nom. transl''. et ''emend''. Jell, ''in'' Whittington ''et al''., 1997 ''ex'' Yukoniinae S. Zhang in W. Zhang, Lu ''et al''., 1980is a small family of trilobites, belonging to the Eodiscina. Type Genus and species ...

. cited in

Description

Like other agnostids, the body of eodiscids is diminutive, the headshield (or

cephalon Cephalon, Inc. was an American biopharmaceutical company co-founded in 1987 by pharmacologist Frank Baldino, Jr., neuroscientist Michael Lewis, and organic chemist James C. Kauer—all three former scientists with the DuPont Company. Baldino s ...

) and tailshield (or

pygidium The pygidium (plural pygidia) is the posterior body part or shield of crustaceans and some other arthropods, such as insects and the extinct trilobites. In groups other than insects, it contains the anus and, in females, the ovipositor. It is compo ...

) are of approximately same size, with 2 or 3 thoracic segments in-between, each consisting of a horizontal inner portion that abruptly passes into an inclined outer portion (fulcrate). The central raised area of the cephalon (or

glabella The glabella, in humans, is the area of skin between the eyebrows and above the nose. The term also refers to the underlying bone that is slightly depressed, and joins the two brow ridges. It is a cephalometric landmark that is just superior to ...

) is narrow, usually with parallel sides and rounded front. The furrow between the occipital ring and the more frontal parts of the glabella are a pair of pits low on its sides beneath a large median spine extending from the glabella backwards. The distance between the glabella and the border (or preglabellar area) is usually long. This border has dozens of small furrows radiating inward (a so-called scrobiculate border), but this defining feature may be absent in effaced species or destroyed by poor preservation. The axis of the pygidium has four to ten rings.

References

Eodiscina Trilobite families Cambrian trilobites Cambrian first appearances Cambrian extinctions {{Agnostida-stub