Wanneria
genus of arthropods (fossil)
Wanneria is an extinct genus from a well-known class of fossil marine arthropods, the trilobites. It lived during the later part of the Botomian stage, which lasted from approximately 524 to 518.5 million years ago. This faunal stage was part of the Cambrian Period. W. walcottana and W. cranbrookense are the only known species in this genus.
Description
As with most early trilobites, Wanneria walcottana has an almost flat exoskeleton, that is only thinly calcified, and has crescent-shaped eye ridges. As part of the Olenellina suborder, Wanneria lacks dorsal sutures. Like all other members of the Olenelloidea superfamily, the eye-ridges spring from the back of the frontal lobe (L4) of the central area of the cephalon, that is called glabella. The dorsal exoskeleton of Wanneria has an inverted egg shaped outline, approximately 1½ times longer than wide, ignoring the pleural spines, and is at its widest at the back of the cephalon. The horizontal outline of the head (or cephalon) is semi-circular with the back (or posterior margin) perpendicular to the midline or somewhat arching backwards. The L4 is wider than the other lobes, and touches the raised ridge (or anterior border) at the front of the cephalon.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Wanneria” is genus of arthropods (fossil). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wanneria, genus and arthropods, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3169659. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wanneria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.