Luprisca

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Luprisca incuba is an extinct small crustacean called an ostracod that lived about 450 million years ago, during the Ordovician period. Fossils were found in mudstone rocks in New York, in a layer called the Lorraine Group. A team from Yale, the University of Kansas, the University of Oxford, and the Japan Agency for Marine Science and Technology described it in 2014. The name Luprisca honors Lucina, the Roman goddess of childbirth, and incuba suggests incubation of eggs.

The animal was about 1.2 to 2.5 millimeters long. The fossil includes a full shell with the delicate limbs and embryos inside it. It was preserved as pyrite and studied with X-ray and CT scans.

Luprisca incuba is believed to be the oldest known example of parental care in ostracods, because the mother held her eggs and developing young inside brood pouches within her body until they were ready to hatch. Some Cambrian fossils, like Waptia, also show brood care, but Luprisca incuba is the earliest known case among ostracods. The study describing the fossil was published in Current Biology.