Amphiaspidiformes Amphiaspidida is a taxon of extinct cyathaspidid heterostracan agnathans whose fossils are restricted to Lower Devonian marine strata of Siberia near the Taimyr Peninsula.
Amphiaspids are easily distinguished from other heterostracans in that all of the plates of the cephalothorax armor are fused into a single, muff-like unit, so that the forebody of the living animal would have looked like a potpie or a hot waterbottle with a pair of small, or degenerated eyes sometimes flanked by preorbital openings, a pair of branchial openings for exhaling, and a simple, slit-like, or tube-like mouth.
Amphiaspidida is traditionally regarded as the sister-taxon or daughter-taxon of the cyathaspidid family Ctenaspidae (ne "Ctenaspididae"), though no formal shared traits are identified between the two groups.
As mentioned earlier, Amphiaspidida is treated as either a suborder of Cyathaspidiformes, or as an order in its own right, sometimes referred to as "Amphiaspidiformes."
An additional species, Gunaspis orientalis, is treated as Amphiaspidida incertae sedis because it is known only from fragments with distinctive micro-ornamentation.