page_title: Salteropterus
section_title: History of research
hierarchical_section_title: Salteropterus / History of research
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration of the metastoma of the eurypterid Salteropterus longilabium.
context_page_description: Salteropterus is a genus of eurypterid, an extinct group of aquatic arthropods. Fossils of Salteropterus have been discovered in deposits of Late Silurian age in Britain. Classified as part of the family Slimonidae, the genus contains one known valid species, S. abbreviatus, which is known from fossils discovered in Herefordshire, England, and a dubious species, S. longilabium, with fossils discovered in Leintwardine, also in Herefordshire. The generic name honours John William Salter, who originally described S. abbreviatus as a species of Eurypterus in 1859.
  Salteropterus is assumed to have been quite similar to its close relative Slimonia, but the fragmentary nature of the fossil remains of Salteropterus make direct comparisons difficult. Salteropterus does however preserve a highly distinctive telson unlike any other in the Eurypterida. Beginning with an expanded and flattened section, like that of Slimonia, the telson ends in a long stem that culminates in a tri-lobed structure at its end. Though the exact function remains unknown, this structure might have been used for additional balancing alongside the flattened part preceding it.
context_section_description: Salteropterus abbreviatus was named as a species of Eurypterus by John William Salter in 1859, though the specimen used was not nearly complete enough to reveal the unique features of Salteropterus known today. Salter considered the species to be "thoroughly distinct", yet similar to Eurypterus acuminatus (today classified as Herefordopterus), with a telson that was as if the one of E. acuminatus had been abbreviated, hence the name of the taxon. More complete specimens would be discovered in Perton in Herefordshire, England in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The fossil remains known of Salteropterus are all fragmentary, similar to other eurypterid fossils recovered from Perton. Though the Perton fossils are almost universally fragmentary, they preserve unusually delicate details, for example individual facets on the eyes of a specimen of Hughmilleria and bristles of epicoxites (a process on the end of the toothed part of the coxae).
  Fossilised remains of eurypterids have been known from Perton since 1869, when Rev. Peter Bellinger Brodie notified the Geological Society of London about fossil Eurypterus and Pterygotus he had discovered in the region. The specimens collected were examined by Henry Woodward, who determined that they consisted of  Pterygotus banksii along with various species of Eurypterus, including E. acuminatus, E. pygmaeus and E. abbreviatus. Eurypterus abbreviatus was reclassified under a genus of its own, Salteropterus, in 1951 by Erik N. Kjellesvig-Waering following the discovery and description of a more complete telson (specimen number BGS GSM Zf-2864) discovered by Roy Woodhouse Pocock and A. J. Butler in the quarry of Perton in 1939. Preserving an elongate telson that had been unknown to Woodward, the specimen firmly established that the species could not be classified as a species of Eurypterus and it was thus placed in the new genus Salteropterus, named in honour of John William Salter. Though eurypterid genera are not normally described based only on features of the telson, Salteropterus is considered so different and distinct that comparisons with other genera is redundant.
  In 1961, Kjellesvig-Waering suggested that the fragmentary and dubious Slimonia species S. stylops might be synonymous with Salteropterus abbreviatus. The known fossil of S. stylops consists of a single carapace that could potentially belong to any of those species found in Herefordshire that lack a known carapace. In particular, Hughmilleria acuminata and Salteropterus are good candidates as those are close relatives. Kjellesvig-Waring considered Salteropterus to be the best candidate as it is the most closely related to Slimonia itself. As the only known specimen of S. stylops is at an unknown location, further study of the specimen is impossible and it is treated as a nomen dubium.
  The dubious species S. longilabium was named by Kjellesvig-Waering in 1961 to refer to a partial metastoma (specimen number 39386 in the collection of the British Museum of Natural History) discovered by Alfred Marston in around 1855 in Leintwardine, England. This specimen was first incorrectly referred to a species of Carcinosoma (C. punctatum) by John William Salter, before he realised that the long and narrow metastoma could not belong to Carcinosoma, but rather to a genus similar to Slimonia. Due to a multitude of features, such as the lack of a cordated area, the metastoma can not be referred to Slimonia however, and the only genus closely enough related to Slimonia in the correct region and period of time is Salteropterus, making its assignment to the genus dubious. Further supporting the assignment of the metastoma to Salteropterus is the discovery of a tergite (specimen number 89597 in the collection of the Geological Survey and Museum, London) from the same location as the S. longilabium metastoma that preserves the same sort of ornamentation found in S. abbreviatus.
caption: Illustration of a fragmentary metastoma referred to S. longilabium.
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