Morphometric analysis of extant Nephrops norvegicus (Linné, 1758) and Solenocera membranacea (Risso, 1826) applied to systematic palaeontology of fossil decapod crustaceans

The study of fossil decapods have shown the need for reliable statistics to document the value of the characters considered. Morphometric data, however, are usually absent in scientific papers on living decapod crustaceans since neontological systematists normally analyze internal organs and tissues not available in fossils. A series of morphometric data for two extant species have been processed statistically in order to obtain numerical models that could be applied to fossil species showing morphological affinities.