Astacus multicavatus Bell, 1863 is a marine lobster (Decapoda: Erymoidea: Erymidae), not a freshwater crayfish

Julien Devillez (1) , Tadashi Kawai (2) , Denis Audo (3, 1)

1 CR2P - Centre de Recherche en Paléontologie - Paris
2 Hokkaido Research Organization Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan
3 NIGPAS-CAS - Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology

Crayfishes comprise a large and diverse group of freshwater lobster-like crustaceans. Despite being abundant in the recent, they are extremely rare in the fossil record. We revise a putative occurrence of Astacus multicavatus Bell, 1863 from the marine Hauterivian of Speeton Clay (Speeton, United Kingdom), which was used a few years ago as a calibration fossil representing Astacus Fabricius, 1775 for divergence time analyses. This species is actually a senior synonym to Eryma sulcatum Harbort, 1905. It so appears that Eryma multicavatum (Bell, 1863) comb. nov. is not a freshwater crayfish but a marine representative of Erymidae. Two co-occurring isolated chelae, also from the Speeton Clay, may correspond to larger, older specimens of E. multicavatum comb. nov.

Keywords: Astacoidea; Cretaceous; fossil crayfishes; Speeton Clay

Domains: Paleontology

Julien Devillez, Tadashi Kawai, Denis Audo. Astacus multicavatus Bell, 1863 is a marine lobster (Decapoda: Erymoidea: Erymidae), not a freshwater crayfish. Journal of Crustacean Biology, 2021, 41 (2), ⟨10.1093/jcbiol/ruab028⟩. ⟨mnhn-03608660⟩