Description

Lepidocoleus strictus
Early Devonian.
Bois d’Arc Formation, Cravat Member
Coal County, Oklahoma.
26mm armored worm on 60mm slab

Worm.

Lepidocoleus is a genus of armored worm of the Class Machaeridia, Phylum Annelida.  It is known from the Silurian to Devonian of North America and Europe.  Other machaeridians survived into the Carboniferous.

Rare find in the Bois d’Arc Formation.

It was hard out there for a worm in the Devonian. Jawed fishes were evolving and you still had eurypterids and nautiloids shooting around so some worms suited up in armor. Knights of the Roundworm? Sir Lancelet? Anyone?