165 Ma Polychelidan lobster organs from La Voulte (France)

Polychelidan lobsters are decapod crustaceans that used to be abundant until Late Jurassic in many environments and are now restricted to deep-sea environment. Fossil specimens found in La Voulte-sur-Rhône (Callovian, 165 Ma) are often preserved in nodules and preserve organs that can be studied almost as well as on fresh species. The goal of this project is to study how their anatomy compares to their extant relatives and other crustaceans to assess the impact of 165 Ma of evolution and an environmental shift on organs morphology, as well as to provide new characters to place polychelidans within decapod crustaceans, their phylogenetic position still being a matter of debates.