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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
When fish-remains were first discovered in the Ludlow bone-bed and other horizons of the Upper Silurian series, some of the fragments were regarded as toothed jaws by Agassiz, who described them under the names of Plectrodus mirabilis, P. pleiopristis, and Sclerodus pustuliferus. The same fossils were afterwards considered to be of Crustacean origin by M'Coy, but definitely proved to be fish-remains by the microscopical examination of Harley, who pointed out that while they could not be teeth or jaws, they appeared to him to be “the posterior spines of the cephalic plate of some Cephalaspidian fish”. The latter view was adopted by Lankester, who treated the specimens as parts of the cornua of a small Cephalaspidian headshield which he named Eukeraspis pustuliferus.
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