Dinocaridida[derivation 1] is a proposed fossil taxon of basal arthropods,[3] which flourished during the Cambrian period and survived up to Early Devonian.
Characterized by a pair of frontal appendages and series of body flaps, the name of Dinocaridids (Greek for deinos "terrible" and Latin for caris "crab") refers to the suggested role of some of these members as the largest marine predators of their time.
[4][8][9] Dinocaridids were bilaterally symmetrical, with a mostly non-mineralized cuticle and a body divided into two major groupings of tagmata (body-sections): head and trunk.
The frontal appendages are either lobopodous (soft as in gilled lobopodians) or arthropodized (hardened and segmented as in Radiodonta) and usually paired, but highly fused into a nozzle-like structure in Opabiniidae.
[3] With the exclusion of questionable taxa (e.g. the putative opabiniid Myoscolex[27]), the former were known only by Opabinia, while all radiodont species were grouped under a single family: Anomalocarididae (hence the previous common name 'Anomalocaridids'[18]).