Fossil Crustaceans
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of approximately 4,750 fossil crustaceans. Crustaceans are a diverse group of marine, freshwater and terrestrial arthropods that includes crabs, lobsters, shrimps, phyllocarids, ostracods, branchiopods and woodlice. Their bodies are protected by a strong exoskeleton and both body and limbs are segmented. This collection mainly consists of fossil ostracods from Scotland, from the Silurian, Carboniferous and Quaternary. Ostracods are tiny animals with a soft body and seven pairs of appendages, enclosed in two shells, that are often oval shaped. They generally vary in size from 0.4 to1.5mm, so the specimens are often stored on microfossil mounts or in small boxes. The next largest group comprises shrimp-like crustaceans known as phyllocarids, from both the Silurian and Carboniferous Periods. Many of the Silurian specimens were collected by Robert Slimon, and belong to the species Ceratiocaris papilio, from localities around Lesmahagow, South Lanarkshire, and Dictyocaris sp. from the same area and from the Pentlands. The Carboniferous examples are mainly from central Scotland and include type material, such as the holotype of Dithyrocaris testudinea collected by John Young. A small collection of shrimps from central Scotland and the Borders is also from the Carboniferous Period. The collection also holds a small non-Scottish mixed collection of crabs and lobsters and a few Devonian branchiopods from northern Scotland.
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