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The first Furongian trilobites are described herein from the Cambrian of the Cantabrian Zone, NW Spain. They were collected during the construction of the >Túnel Ordovícico del Fabar> from the shales of >El Fabar Beds> in the La Matosa member of the Barrios Formation. The assemblage includes the aphelaspidine genus Maladioidella, with a specimen identified as M. cf. colcheni, a species previously known from Sierra de la Demanda (Spain), and possibly Sardinia and Oman. Fragments of an indeterminate olenid trilobite and phyllocarid crustaceans have also been recorded. Based on the acritarch assemblage, these beds are considered as late Jiangshanian or earliest Stage 10 of the Cambrian System. The ichnofossil Cruziana semiplicata has also been collected in the tunnel from the upper part of the Ligüeria Member (Tremadocian) of the Barrios Formation, clearly postdating the occurrence of Maladioidella colcheni, its supposed tracemarker according to some authors. The separate record of both taxa (a Furongian trilobite and a Cambro-Ordovic-ian trace fossil) does not support this statement, so their relationship would be refuted in this case.

Illaenid trilobites were relatively scarce in south-polar peri-Gondwanan areas during the Ordovician, with all their African occurrences restricted to the Middle and Upper Ordovician of Morocco. At a specific level, only the Bohemian form Ectillaenus benignensis (Novák) has been positively identified from the Middle Ordovician of that region. In the present work we add the discovery of the new form Caudillaenus nicolasi gen. et sp. nov., occurring in a single bed of late Darriwilian 2 age within the Taddrist Formation of the Rahiat region (south of Alnif), in the central Moroccan Anti-Atlas. The new genus is characterized by a large and subtriangular pygidium, a cephalon with relatively large eyes, a broad rostral plate with a short upwardly and forwardly turned posterior flange, and a globose hypostome. It shows a spheroidal enrolment type previously unknown in illaenids, with the pygidium protruding beyond the cephalon, and the cephalic margin fitting into a shallow and wide coaptative furrow on the pygidial doublure.