HONG KONG: An international team of paleontologists from the University of Toronto, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and the Pomona College in California have published a finding this week in the journal Paleontology about a fossil deposit in a shale in Canada with the remains of a lobster-like creature that is believed to have lived 508 million years ago – nearly 250 million years before the appearance of the first dinosaur.
Named Yawunik kootenayi after a fabled history of the Ktuxaxa people of the Marble Canyon region of Kootenay, the creature is said to have a pair of eyes and appendages that helped it to grasp things. Looking like the antennae of shrimps or a beetle, the frontal appendages of this found fossil is made up of three lengthy claws with two of them having opposing rows of teeth that enabled the creature to capture its prey.
