Antrimpos ?speciosus

Antrimpos was a marine arthropod, a decapod (i.e., five pairs of legs) crustacean. This large-bodied shrimp is thought to be related to a group of modern tropical shrimp species (Penaeidae) that are commercially farmed for food (Robalino et al., 2016). Penaeoidean shrimps are among the most abundant fossil crustaceans in the Solnhofen Limestone (Odin et al., 2019). Fossils of this genus have been discovered in Triassic rocks of France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, and in Jurassic rocks of France, Germany, Switzerland, and Wyoming in the United States (Paleobiology Database, n.d.).

The excellent preservation and articulation of the specimen displayed here, including one of its characteristic long antennae, supports the inference of very rapid burial and preservation, before it could decay or be consumed by scavengers. In laboratory experiments, dead shrimps typically fall apart (disarticulate) within two to three weeks, even in the absence of scavenging and bioturbation (Plotnick, 1986).

References:

Odin, G.P., Charbonnier, S., Devillez, J. and Schweigert, G., 2019. On unreported historical specimens of marine arthropods from the Solnhofen and Nusplingen Lithographic Limestones (Late Jurassic, Germany) housed at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris. Geodiversitas, 41(1), pp. 643-662. https://doi.org/10.5252/geodiversitas2019v41a17.

Paleobiology Database, No date. Antrimpos. Available at: https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=22318. (Accessed: January 2025).

Plotnick, R.E., 1986. Taphonomy of a modern shrimp: implications for the arthropod fossil record. Palaios, pp.286-293. doi:10.2307/3514691.

Robalino, J., Wilkins, B., Bracken-Grissom, H.D., Chan, T.Y. and O’Leary, M.A., 2016. The origin of large-bodied shrimp that dominate modern global aquaculture. PloS one, 11(7), p.e0158840. doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158840.