Page:Scientific results HMS Challenger vol 18 part 1.djvu/1054

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
846
THE VOYAGE OF THE H.M.S. CHALLENGER.

pores and an incomplete corona of thirty to forty very small marginal pores; the latter are not to be distinguished from the pores of the obliterated sutures. Radial spines quadrangular, the outer pyramidal part shorter than the inner prismatic part. Condyles grown together. As the plates are quite even, the shell becomes icosahedral.

Dimensions.—Diameter of the shell 0.16, pores 0.002 to 0.02, bars 0.005.

Habitat.—North Pacific, Station 241, surface.


9. Icosaspis icosastaura, n. sp. (Pl. 136, fig. 3).

Tessaraspis icosastaura, Haeckel, 1882, Manuscript et Atlas.

Parmal plates of different size and form; in the centre of each plate a cross of four larger primary, pyriform aspinal pores; between these four smaller roundish angular pores, and around this rosette a circle of ten to twenty (commonly sixteen) coronal pores, little larger than the very small sutural pores. Radial spines very thin and long, cylindrical or bristle-shaped. Condyles grown together; no suture visible.

Dimensions.—Diameter of the shell 0.14; larger pores of the cross 0.01, smaller pores 0.002 to 0.008; bars 0.002 to 0.004.

Habitat.—Central Pacific, Station 268, surface.


Genus 365. Hylaspis,[1] n. gen.

Definition.Dorataspida with twenty plates, which are perforated by one hundred and sixty to three hundred or more parmal pores (in each plate four crossed aspinal pores, and around them four to twelve or more coronal pores). Surface covered with numerous by-spines.

The genus Hylaspis exhibits the same structure of the shell as the nearly allied ancestral genus Icosaspis, and differs from it only in the development of by-spines. Some species of these two genera exhibit the highest degree of complication in the structure of the shell seen among the Dorataspida.


1. Hylaspis serrulata, n. sp. (Pl. 135, fig. 1).

Parmal meshes four hundred to five hundred; in the centre of each plate a cross of four very large pentagonal or roundish aspinal pores, and around this a circle of sixteen to twenty much smaller irregular, polygonal, coronal pores; the latter of about the same size as the sutural pores. On each condyle one thin zigzag-shaped by-spine, nearly as long as the radius. Twenty radial spines very long, quadrangular, prismatic; on the inside thinner and smooth, on the outside thickened, and armed with four rows of recurved teeth, serrated.

Dimensions.—Diameter of the shell 0.18, aspinal spines 0.02, other pores 0.002 to 0.01, bars 0.003.

Habitat.—South Atlantic, Station 326, surface.


  1. Hylaspis = Forest shield; ὕλη, ἀσπίς.