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Diagram of a prawn, with the carapace highlighted in red. A carapace is a dorsal (upper) section of the exoskeleton or shell in a number of animal groups, including arthropods, such as crustaceans and arachnids, as well as vertebrates, such as turtles and tortoises. In turtles and tortoises, the underside is called the plastron.
The shell of a turtle is unique among vertebrates and serves to protect the animal and provide shelter from the elements. [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ] It is primarily made of 50–60 bones and consists of two parts: the domed, dorsal (back) carapace and the flatter, ventral (belly) plastron .
The head and thorax may be fused together to form a cephalothorax, [8] which may be covered by a single large carapace. [9] The crustacean body is protected by the hard exoskeleton, which must be moulted for the animal to grow. The shell around each somite can be divided into a dorsal tergum, ventral sternum and a lateral pleuron. Various parts ...
Arthropoda is the largest animal phylum with the estimates of the number of arthropod species varying from 1,170,000 to 5~10 million and accounting for over 80 percent of all known living animal species.
This arthropod appears to be blind due to the lack of eyes on its carapace, suggesting it lived either in deep water or buried in the sediments. Unlike modern horseshoe crabs, the prosomal appendages of Venustulus covered less of the total carapace length. The animals carapace is semi-circular in shape and has a procurved posterior area.
Discarded exoskeleton of dragonfly nymph Exoskeleton of cicada attached to a Tridax procumbens (colloquially known as the tridax daisy)An exoskeleton (from Greek έξω éxō "outer" [1] and σκελετός skeletós "skeleton" [2] [3]) is a skeleton that is on the exterior of an animal in the form of hardened integument, which both supports the body's shape and protects the internal organs ...
The carapace connects to the plastron by three pairs of inframarginal scutes forming the bridge of the shell. [21] The plastron features paired gular, humeral, pectoral, abdominal, femoral, and anal scutes. [8] The shell serves as external armor, although loggerhead sea turtles cannot retract their heads or flippers into their shells. [22]
At the time of moulting, the crab takes in a lot of water to expand and crack open the old shell at a line of weakness along the back edge of the carapace. The crab must then extract all of itself – including its legs, mouthparts, eyestalks, and even the lining of the front and back of the digestive tract – from the old shell. This is a ...