Remipedia

Remipedes
Temporal range:
Speleonectes tanumekes
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Clade: Allotriocarida
Class: Remipedia
(Yager, 1981)
Orders & families

See text

Remipedia is a class of blind crustacean-like animals, closely related to hexapods. They are found in coastal aquifers which contain saline groundwater, with populations identified in almost every ocean basin so far explored, including in Australia, the Caribbean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. The first described remipede was the fossil Tesnusocaris goldichi (Lower Pennsylvanian). Since 1979, at least seventeen living species have been identified in subtropical regions around the world.