Remipedia

The Rémipèdes are a class of the Pancrustacés which for the first time were described by an individual Fossile, Enantiopoda (Low Pennsylvania). Since 1979, a dozen species was met in the the Caribbean and in Australia. All the current members do not have eyes and live in cavities connected to sea water.

The body as of these individuals is colorless, comprises an identical head and 32 segments which compose a lengthened trunk. The swimming appendices are side on each segment, and these animals swim on the back. They move generally slowly and kill their preys thanks to their hooks and their glands with poison. Their body, of rather primitive organization within the Pancrustacés, made them regard as an ancestral group. However, Fanenbruck et al. (2004) showed that at least one of the species, Godzilliognomus frondosus , has a brain very well differentiated and organized, with an olfactive surface developed (what is not surprising insofar as he lives in places without light). The size and the complexity of the brain suggested in Fanenbruck et al. that Rémipèdes are rather a brother group of the Malacostracés, considered as most advanced of the Crustacés.

List orders and families

Order Nectiopoda Schram, 1986

Family Godzilliidae Schram, Yager & Emerson, 1986
Family Speleonectidae Yager, 1981

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