Jamoytius kerwoodi, a new Chordate from the Silurian of Lanarkshire

Abstract

In 1914 the British Museum (Natural History) acquired from William McPherson, the well-known collector, a few ostracoderms from the “Downtonian” of Lanarkshire. Among these were two specimens from Logan Water of an obviously new form, which, however, were so preserved that satisfactory identification by the methods then in use was not possible. They were tentatively labelled “allied to Lasanius” and are the “interesting though tantalizing new specimens” referred to by Smith Woodward (1921, p. 26) in his first Linnean Address. Nothing further was done with them for nearly twenty years, when the rearrangement of the collections again drew attention to these problematical fossils: and subsequent investigation has shown them to be of considerable importance.