WASHINGTON: More than 250 million years before the first dinosaur, the most fearsome killers on Earth may have been lobsters. Yawunik kootenayi, a common ancestor to spiders, shrimp and butterflies, was a predatory “lobster-like” creature that ruled the seas half a billion years ago.
As reported this week in the journal Paleontology, fossils of Yawunik were recently unearthed from Marble Canyon, part of the renowned Burgess Shale rock formation of British Columbia. This massive fossil bed holds specimens of many sea creatures that lived during the Cambrian period, the geologic era that saw a rapid diversification of marine life forms.
This particular creature was named after a mythical marine monster that played a central role in the creation story of the Ktunaxa people. The name seems befitting because, according to study co-author Jean-Bernard Carbon, the lobster Yawunik was probably one of the most important predators of its time. “Yawunik is the most abundant of the large new species of the Marble Canyon site, and so, as a predator, it held a key position in the food network and had an important impact on this past ecosystem.
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