Houcaris

Houcaris
Temporal range:
Fossils of H. magnabasis (B)
and H. saron (D)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Stem group: Arthropoda
Class: Dinocaridida
Order: Radiodonta
Genus: Houcaris
Wu et al., 2021
Type species
Houcaris saron
(Hou, Bergström, & Ahlberg, 1995)
Other species
  • H.? magnabasis
    (Pates, Daley, Edgecombe, Cong, & Lieberman, 2019)
  • H.? consimilis
    (Cong et al., 2018)

Houcaris is a possibly paraphyletic radiodont genus, tentatively assigned to either Amplectobeluidae, Anomalocarididae or Tamisiocarididae, known from Cambrian Series 2 of China and the United States. The type species is Houcaris saron which was originally described as a species of the related genus Anomalocaris. Other possible species include H. magnabasis and H. consimilis. The genus Houcaris was established for the two species in 2021 and honors Hou Xian-guang, who had discovered and named the type species Anomalocaris saron in 1995 along with his colleagues Jan Bergström and Per E. Ahlberg.