Crustacean - Fossil Record

Fossil Record

Crustaceans have a rich and extensive fossil record, which begins with animals such as Canadaspis and Perspicaris from the Middle Cambrian age Burgess Shale. Most of the major groups of crustaceans appear in the fossil record before the end of the Cambrian, namely the Branchiopoda, Maxillopoda (including barnacles and tongue worms) and Malacostraca; there is some debate as to whether or not Cambrian animals assigned to Ostracoda are truly ostracods, which would otherwise start in the Ordovician. The only classes to appear later are the Cephalocarida, which have no fossil record, and the Remipedia, which were first described from the fossil Tesnusocaris goldichi, but do not appear until the Carboniferous. Most of the early crustaceans are rare, but fossil crustaceans become abundant from the Carboniferous onwards.

Within the Malacostraca, no fossils are known for krill, while both Hoplocarida and Phyllopoda contain important groups that are now extinct as well as extant members (Hoplocarida: mantis shrimp are extant, while Aeschronectida are extinct; Phyllopoda: Canadaspidida are extinct, while Leptostraca are extant). Cumacea and Isopoda are both known from the Carboniferous, as are the first true mantis shrimp. In the Decapoda, prawns and polychelids appear in the Triassic, and shrimp and crabs appear in the Jurassic; however, the great radiation of crustaceans occurred in the Cretaceous, particularly in crabs, and may have been driven by the adaptive radiation of their main predators, bony fish. The first true lobsters also appear in the Cretaceous.