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Sidneyia
SIDNEYA
An arthropod of uncertain systematic affinities with other groups of living and fossil arthropods. It is a large organism( more than 13 cm ), whose body is composed of an anterior part or "cephalon' ,equipped with a backward-pointing ventral plate covering the mouth; a throax, made up of nine articulated segments or somites that constitute the broadest part of the animal; a posterior part or cylindrical in shape, with an exoskeleton subdivided into two or three segments. At the end of the abdomen is the telson, with two large, fan-shaped appendages at its sides. The eyes are borne on a stalk and there are also two antennae. The thorax possesses appendages adapted to walking.
NOTE --- Sidneya must have lived on the sea floor, judging from the considerable development of its ambulatory limbs. It was a carnivorous animal that, judging from the fossilized remains in its stomach, must have fed on ostracod crustaceans, hyolithid molluscs and small trilobites.
Copyright 1986 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A, Milan
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