Polychaetaspis Kozłowski, 1956

Szaniawski, Hubert & Drygant, Daniel, 2014, Early Devonian scolecodonts from Podolia, Ukraine, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 59 (4), pp. 967-983 : 971

Genus Polychaetaspis Kozłowski, 1956

Type species: Polychaetaspis wyszogrodensis Kozłowski, 1956 , erratic boulder, Poland; Ordovician .

Remarks. —Genus Polychaetaspis is known from numerous species which are based on rich material of joined jaw apparatuses ( Kozłowski 1956; Kielan-Jaworowska 1966; Szaniawski and Wrona 1973; Hints 1998) as well as their reconstructions of isolated elements ( Walliser 1960; Männil and Zaslavskaya 1985; Hints 1998). However, formal status of the genus has been questioned by Eriksson (1997). The author restudied the original collection of Hinde (1879) and came to the conclusion that Polychaetaspis should be treated as a junior synonym of Oenonites Hinde, 1879 . In our opinion this proposition cannot be accepted because the singular specimen of its “ lectotype ”— Oenonites curvidens Hinde, 1879 , designated by Jansonius and Craig only in 1971, is not determinable to the species level and should be treated as nomen dubium. The lectotype is “...based upon one right MI of inferior quality...” ( Eriksson 1997: 217) which “... rests in a slide glued onto a piece of paper with the ramus facing the observer” ( Eriksson 1997: 219). In result it can be seen well only in oblique dorsal view. Despite of its modern illustrations, presented by Eriksson (1997), the observable structural details are not sufficient for determination at the species level.

The genus Oenonites was originally established for nine species ( Hinde 1879) but each of them is represented by a single specimen. The specimens are morphologically diverse and have been assigned to some different genera in later literature. It seems rather obvious that Hinde’s concept of the genus Oenonites was completely different from that of Polychaetaspis because in his later publication ( Hinde 1882) the very well preserved first maxillae of typical polychaetaspids were assigned not to Oenonites but to Lumbriconereites Ehlers, 1868 (e.g., Lumbriconereites obliquus Eichwald, 1854 ). The latter generic name has been later commonly used for detached MI of polychaetaspids. However, the type species of the genus— L. deperditius ( Ehlers, 1868) has been based on a body imprint preserved in Jurassic litographic limestone from Solnhofen and cannot be well compared with scolecodonts (see also Jansonius and Craig 1971).