New porcellioidean gastropods from early Devonian of Royal Creek area, Yukon Territory, Canada, with notes on their early phylogeny

Abstract

This paper presents a description of new gastropods belonging to the superfamily Porcellioidea (Vetigastropoda) from the richly diverse Lower Devonian gastropod fauna of the Road River Formation in the Royal Creek area, Yukon Territory. This fauna belongs to Western Canada Province of the Old World Realm. The Pragian speciesPorcellia(Porcellia)yukonensisn. sp. andPorcellia(Paraporcellia) sp. represent the oldest presently known members of subgeneraPorcellia(Porcellia) andPorcellia(Paraporcellia). Their simple shell ornamentation fits well with an earlier described evolutionary trend in shell morphology of the Porcellinae. Late Pragian to early EmsianPerryconcha pulchran. gen. and n. sp. is the first member of the Porcellioidea bearing a row of tremata on adult teleoconch whorls. The occurrence of this shell feature in the Porcellioidea is additional evidence that the evolution of the apertural slit was much more complicated than has been proposed in classical models of Paleozoic gastropod evolution.