Fig. 267. Cystoids, one showing Two Rudimentary Arms
Of the free echinoderms, such as the starfish and the sea urchin, the former has been found in the Cambrian rocks of Europe, but neither have so far been discovered in the strata of this period in North America. The stemmed and lower division of the echinoderms was represented by a primitive type, the cystoid, so called from its saclike form, A small globular or ovate “calyx” of calcareous plates, with an aperture at the top for the mouth, inclosed the body of the animal, and was attached to the sea bottom by a short flexible stalk consisting of disks of carbonate of lime held together by a central ligament.
Arthropods. These segmented animals with “jointed feet,” as their name suggests, may be divided in a general way into water breathers and air breathers. The first-named and lower division comprises the class of the Crustacea,—arthropods protected by a hard exterior skeleton, or “crust,”—of which crabs, crayfish, and lobsters are familiar examples. The higher division, that of the air breathers, includes the following classes: spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and insects.
Fig. 268. Trilobites
A, a Cambrian species; B, a Devonian species showing eyes; C, restoration of an Ordovician species
The trilobite. The aquatic arthropods, the Crustacea, culminated before the air breathers; and while none of the latter are found in the Cambrian, the former were the dominant life of the time in numbers, in size, and in the variety of their forms. The leading crustacean type is the trilobite, which takes its name from the three lobes into which its shell is divided longitudinally. There are also three cross divisions,—the head shield, the tail shield, and between the two the thorax, consisting of a number of distinct and unconsolidated segments. The head shield carries a pair of large, crescentic, compound eyes, like those of the insect. The eye varies greatly in the number of its lenses, ranging from fourteen in some species to fifteen thousand in others. [Figure 268, C], is a restoration of the trilobite, and shows the appendages, which are found preserved only in the rarest cases.