Thecideida Elliot 1958

Thecideida is an order of cryptic articulate brachiopods characterized by their small size and habit of cementing their ventral valves to hard substrates such as shells, rocks and carbonate hardgrounds. Thecideides first appear in the Triassic (Jaecks and Carlson, 2001) and are common today (Lüter, 2005; Lüter et al., 2007).

Thecidium mediterraneum, A. natural size: B. section through shell (magnified)

Taxonomy

Order Thecideida

• Superfamily Thecideoidea Gray, 1840
• Superfamily Thecospiroidea Bittner, 1890

References

• Paleobiology Database on thecideides
• Jaecks, G.S.; Carlson, S.J. (2001). "How phylogenetic inference can shape our view of heterochrony: examples from thecideide brachiopods". Paleobiology. 27 (2): 205–225. doi:10.1666/0094-8373(2001)027<0205:hpicso>2.0.co;2.
• Lüter, C. (2005). "The first Recent species of the unusual brachiopod Kakanuiella (Thecideidae) from New Zealand deep waters". Systematics and Biodiversity. 3: 105–111. doi:10.1017/s1477200004001598.
• Lüter, C.; Hoffmann, J.; Logan, A. (2007). "Cryptic speciation in the Recent thecideide brachiopod Thecidellina in the Atlantic and the Caribbean". Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 98 (3–4): 405–413. doi:10.1017/s1755691007078449.