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Correcting a 135-year error: Limulidae Leach, 1819 (Chelicerata, Xiphosura) is the proper authority, not Limulidae Zittel, 1885

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2021

Philip M. Novack-Gottshall Open the ORCID record for Philip M. Novack-Gottshall [Opens in a new window]  and
Roy E. Plotnick Open the ORCID record for Roy E. Plotnick [Opens in a new window]
Philip M. Novack-Gottshall
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, Benedictine University, 5700 College Road, Lisle, Illinois60532, USA
Roy E. Plotnick
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 West Taylor Street, Chicago, Illinois60607, USA
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Extract

The horseshoe crab Limulus polyphemus (Linnaeus, 1758) is a famous species, renowned as a ‘living fossil’ (Owen, 1873; Barthel, 1974; Kin and Błażejowski, 2014) for its apparently little-changed morphology for many millions of years. The genus Limulus Müller, 1785 was used by Leach (1819, p. 536) as the basis of a new family Limulidae and synonymized it with Polyphemus Lamarck, 1801 (Lamarck's proposed but later unaccepted replacement for Limulus, as discussed by Van der Hoeven, 1838, p. 8) and Xyphotheca Gronovius, 1764 (later changed to Xiphosura Gronovius, 1764, another junior synonym of Limulus). He also included the valid modern genus Tachypleus Leach, 1819 in the family. The primary authority of Leach (1819) is widely recognized in the neontological literature (e.g., Dunlop et al., 2012; Smith et al., 2017). It is also the authority recognized in the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS Editorial Board, 2021).

Type
Taxonomic Note
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 95 , Issue 4 , July 2021 , pp. 886 - 887
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Paleontological Society

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References

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