Illustrated: Mickleborough, Jour. Cincinnati Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. 6, 1883, p. 200, figs. 1-3 (endopodites and coxopodites). Walcott, Science, vol. 3, 1884, p. 279, fig. 1 (endopodites, coxopodites, and traces of exopodites). Woodward, Geol. Mag., dec. 3, vol. 1, 1884, p. 162, figs. 1-3 (copies of Mickleborough's figures). Bernard, The Apodidæ, 1892, text fig. 49. Beecher, Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. 13, 1902, p. 169, pl. 5. figs. 5, 6 (outline from one of Mickleborough's figures and an original figure). Walcott, Smithson. Misc. Coll., vol. 67, 1918, p. 133, pl. 24, figs. 3, 3a; pl. 25, fig. 1.
This specimen, which conies from the Richmond strata 2 miles north of Oxford, Ohio, is the best preserved of the specimens of Isotelus with appendages which has so far been found. The individual consists of two parts, the actual specimen, and the impression of the ventral side.
To describe it I am using very skillfully made plaster reproductions of both parts, presented to the Museum of Comparative Zoology by Doctor Charles D. Walcott, and presumably made after he cleaned the specimen as described in Science (1884). I have also an enlarged photograph (pl. 10, fig. 2) which seems to have been made after some later period of cleaning, probably by Professor Beecher, and I have examined the original specimens in Washington.
Viewed from the dorsal side, it is seen that the individual is very imperfect, the greater part of the cephalon being removed by a diagonal break which cuts off the anterior third of the left eye and extends to the front of the second thoracic segment on the right side. The ends of the pleura of both sides of the thorax are broken away, as are also the greater parts of the pleural lobes and the posterior end of the pygidium. On the ventral side, merely the posterior tips of the hypostoma remain, but the distal ends of the appendages were so far within the outer margin that the appendagiferous area is quite fully retained.
The most conspicuous feature of this specimen is the presence of nine pairs of large coxopodites behind the hypostoma, and of the remains of ten pairs of endopodites, making in all ten pairs of appendages which are easily seen. The apportionment of these segments to cephalon, thorax, and pygidium is not agreed upon by the people who have examined the specimens, but if one remembers that it is the outer and not the inner end of the coxopodite which articulates with the appendifer, it at once becomes evident that the first two pairs of appendages on the specimen are the last two pairs belonging to the cephalon, and that the next eight pairs are those of the thorax.
The impressions of fourteen pairs of coxopodites are readily counted on the pygidium, and as Doctor Walcott noted sixteen pairs on the actual specimens, his number was probably correct.
Projecting the line of the back of the cephalon through from the dorsal side, it is found that the posterior tips of the hypostoma are 7 mm. in front of the posterior margin of the cephalon, and that the points of attachment of the posterior pair of cephalic appendages (the second pair shown on the specimen) are just within the posterior margin. The gnathobases of this pair of appendages extend back some distance beneath the thorax, and so give the impression that they belong to that part of the body. So far as can be determined, the cephalic appendages do not differ in any way from those of the thorax. On the mould of the ventral surface, just outside of the lateral edge of the right lobe of the hypostoma, is the somewhat imperfectly shown impression of the endopodite of the third cephalic appendage. The point of junction of the endopodite and coxopodite is about 2 mm. in front of the tip of the adjacent branch of the hypostoma, and the gnathobase is curved around just behind it. This accounts for three of the pairs of cephalic appendages. The second cephalic appendages must have thrust their gnathobases under the prongs of the hypostoma, and the endopodites were probably close to its edge. No trace of this pair appears on the specimen.