Stylonurine eurypterids from the Strud locality (Upper Devonian, Belgium): new insights into the ecology of freshwater sea scorpions

The Upper Famennian (Upper Devonian) Strud locality has yielded very abundant and diversified flora as well as vertebrate and arthropod faunas. The arthropod fauna, mostly recovered from fine shales deposited in a calm, confined floodplain habitat including temporary pools, has delivered a putative insect and various crustaceans including eumalacostracans and notostracan, spinicaudatan and anostracan branchiopods. Here we present the Strud eurypterids, consisting of semi-articulated juvenile specimens assigned to Hardieopteridae recovered from the pool and floodplain deposits, as well as larger isolated fragments of potential adults recovered from stratigraphically lower, coarser dark sandy layers indicative of a higher-energy fluvial environment. The Strud fossils strongly suggest that, as proposed for some Carboniferous eurypterids, juvenile freshwater eurypterids inhabited sheltered nursery pools and migrated to higher-energy river systems as they matured.