''Luprisca incuba'' is an extinct species of

ostracod Ostracods, or ostracodes, are a class of the Crustacea (class Ostracoda), sometimes known as seed shrimp. Some 70,000 species (only 13,000 of which are extant) have been identified, grouped into several orders. They are small crustaceans, typi ...

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can ...

. It was described as a new species in 2014, following discovery and analysis of fossilized specimens in mudstone rocks from New York,

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. A team of researchers from the universities of Yale and Kansas, Oxford and the Japan Agency of Marine Science and Technology made the discovery.

Etymology

The genus and species name were named after '' Lucina'', the goddess of childbirth in Roman mythology, and incuba, implying the mother was incubating her eggs.

Description

With long carapace, it is suggested that the animal was intact with a shell along with the delicate parts of limbs and embryos within the shell. The fossil was preserved in pyrite and was examined using X-Ray and CT Scan techniques.

Habitat and behavior

This species was discovered in the mudstone rocks from

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, from a rock layer called the Lorraine Group. The discovery was said to be the earliest evidence for parental care in the fossils of ostracod. Although some reported this discovery as "oldest parenting of fossil record", however some Cambrian fossil records with brood care, like '' Waptia'' are known. “The mother kept the eggs and the hatchlings in brooding pouches within her body until the young ones were big enough to go out on their own,” David Siveter, professor of geology at the University of Leicester in the UK who led the study, told The Telegraph India. A research paper by Siveter and his colleagues describing the ostracod fossils was published in the journal

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References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q16984870 Ordovician arthropods Prehistoric ostracods Fossil taxa described in 2014 Fossils of the United States Paleontology in New York (state)