''Amphoraspis stellata'' is an amphiaspidid heterostracan in the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Amphiaspididae Amphiaspididae is a family of extinct amphiaspidid heterostracan agnathans whose fossils are restricted to Lower Devonian marine strata of Siberia near the Taimyr Peninsula The Taymyr Peninsula ( ) is a peninsula in the Far North of Russia, ...

. Its fossils are restricted to early

Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a period (geology), geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era during the Phanerozoic eon (geology), eon, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the preceding Silurian per ...

-aged marine strata of the

Taimyr Peninsula The Taymyr Peninsula ( ) is a peninsula in the Far North of Russia, in the Siberian Federal District, that forms the northernmost part of the mainland of Eurasia. Administratively it is part of the Krasnoyarsk Krai Federal subject of Russia. Ge ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. ''A. stellata'', as with all other amphiaspidids, is thought to have been a

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "the depths". ...

filter feeder Filter feeders are aquatic animals that acquire nutrients by feeding on organic matters, food particles or smaller organisms (bacteria, microalgae and zooplanktons) suspended in water, typically by having the water pass over or through a s ...

that lived on top of, or buried just below the surface of the substrate of

hypersaline A hypersaline lake is a landlocked body of water that contains significant concentrations of sodium chloride, brines, and other salts, with saline levels surpassing those of ocean water (3.5%, i.e. ). Specific microbial species can thrive i ...

lagoon-bottoms. So far, ''A. stellata'' is known from at least one, 14 centimeter-long, broad and dorsally rounded cephalothoracic armor that is shaped vaguely like, as the generic name suggests, an

amphora An amphora (; ; English ) is a type of container with a pointed bottom and characteristic shape and size which fit tightly (and therefore safely) against each other in storage rooms and packages, tied together with rope and delivered by land ...

.Novitskaya L.I.; Karatayute Talimaa V.N., 1989: New amphiaspididae from the lower devonian deposits in taimyr russian sfsr ussr. Paleontologicheskii Zhurnal.(3): 112-116 The animal had small, possibly degenerate eyes that were flanked laterally by a small, crescent-shaped branchial opening. The small eyes, in turn, laterally flank a small, slit-shaped mouth at the center of the anterior-most end of the cephalothorax. The external surface of the armor has a unique micro-ornamentation of a pattern of star-like shapes.

References

Amphiaspidida Devonian jawless fish Early Devonian fish Cyathaspidiformes genera Fauna of Siberia Fossils of Russia Early Devonian first appearances Devonian extinctions Fossil taxa described in 1989 {{Devonian-jawless-fish-stub