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Of all the strange creatures unearthed from the Burgess Shale (a cache of extraordinary Cambrian fossils deposited in the Canadian Rockies), none has been as fascinating as Opabinia. And for good reason – with a trunk-like breast ending in five compound eyes and a claw, Opabinia looks otherworldlymore like something imagined in a science fiction novel than a swimmer swimming in Earth’s oceans about 500 million years ago.
In “Amazing life,” his best-selling work on the evolutionary biologist Burgess Shale Stephen Jay Gould’s photo. He described Opabinia as a “strange marvel” and said it belongs to the pantheon of evolutionary icons such as Archeopteryx, Tyrannosaurus rex and archaic human ancestors.
However, Opabinia remained shrouded in evolutionary mystery due to a frustrating lack of fossils. Most of the Opabinia specimens were collected over a century ago, and the creature has never been found outside of the Burgess Shale.
That’s why paleontologist Stephen Pates was so surprised in 2017 when he stumbled upon a strange fossil kept at the Museum of Natural History at the University of Kansas. radiodontsCambrian predators with grasping, claw-like appendages. But the ghostly orange stamp on the front was devoid of trademark extensions.
Currently a researcher at Cambridge University, Dr. “I wasn’t sure what it was when I first looked, but I wasn’t sold on radiodon,” Pates said.
The fossil was unearthed in western Utah and had zig-zag body wings and a tail full of spikes that would make a Stegosaurus jealous. The features were reminiscent of Opabinia, but little more than a crimson speck that concealed the creature’s poorly preserved head, proboscis, and generous eyeball.
Dr. To determine the identity of the Cambrian creature, Pates teamed up with several researchers at Harvard University, where he was a postdoctoral researcher, and put the fossil through various phylogenetic tests. They compared 125 features of the fossils with those of more than 50 modern and extinct arthropods and constructed detailed evolutionary trees.
According to Joanna Wolfe, a Harvard research associate and co-author of the new study, evolution trees allowed the team to rule out radiodons and conclude that the new fossil is closely related to the lone wonder of the Burgess Shale, Opabinia.
In an article published Wednesday Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team described the fossil as only the second opabinid ever discovered. They named the new species Utaurora comosa after Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn who turned her lover into a cicada – one of the numerous arthropods that came after Utaurora.
While the animal may still seem more alien than arthropods, researchers believe Utaurora was an important precursor to the evolution of insects and crustaceans. The Opabiniids were the first groups to have posteriorly facing mouths, and Dr. According to Pates, their curved wings seem to be a precursor to segmentation, a common feature of modern arthropods.
But it is unlike any arthropod living today. Utaurora, with its wings and spiny tail thruster, swam through an ancient sea, probably using its proboscis to shovel food into its mouth. Opabinia looked similar although there were significant differences between the two species. The younger Utaurora had more spikes on its tail, and its body was just over an inch long, half that of Opabinia.
Researchers believe the new discovery puts Opabinia in context, suggesting that one of the planet’s weirdest creatures isn’t just a hit-and-run marvel. Dr. “They were part of the bigger picture of what was going on, not just that weird curiosity,” Pates said.
Although Opabinia is no longer unique, the tiny sea creature grew up reading “The Wonderful Life” by Dr. It is no less fascinating for Wolfe and credits Gould’s fascinating description of Opabinia as a catalyst for his paleontological career.
“I guess it’s not such a weird miracle right now, but I don’t think that makes it any less wonderful,” she says. “It’s just not that weird.”
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