Digestive structures in Cambrian Miaolingian trilobites from Shandong, North China

The preservation of trilobite digestive structures provides a rare opportunity to explore its internal anatomy. Here we report the digestive structures of five trilobite genera from Shandong Province, North China. The trilobite genera include Proasaphiscus, Lioparia, Deiradonyx, Iranoleesia from the Cambrian Miaolingian Mantou Formation in Weifang area, and Maotunia from the Cambrian Miaolingian Zhangxia Formation in Linyi area. The well-preserved specimens displayed exam-ples of four pairs of cephalic digestive glands, and a digestive system consisting of both paired digestive glands and a crop. Our discovery provides new information for understanding the pattern of the trilobite digestive structures, especially in the cephalon.

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