FRANCE: Scientists have found remains of a multi-segmented sea creature that once was the largest animal on the earth. This giant lobster lived around 500 million years ago and was a couple of meters long with a helmet-head. It was ironical as the creature fed on the ocean’s tiniest prey. The new arthropods species is one of the largest creatures scientists have ever discovered.
It may provide clues as to how anthropods’ legs have evolved over time.
Fossils of this giant creature were excavated from 480 million year old rocks located in southeastern Morocco. Just a handful of well-preserved remains were found but scientists did recover around fifty fragments from decomposing carcasses or molted exoskeletons. The largest of the nearly complete skeletons was around 1.3 meters long.
“It is one of the biggest arthropods that ever existed, far bigger than any arthropod today,” said Peter Van Roy, a paleobiologist at Yale University, who helped to excavate the remains.
The anamolocardids were flat body water dwellers. They had a couple of mandible-like appendages at the front end of their mouths that are very much similar to modern day shrimp.
“This would have been one of the largest animals alive at the time,” said study co-author Allison Daley of Oxford University.
“While filter feeding is probably one of the oldest ways for animals to find food, previous filter feeders were smaller, and usually attached to the sea floor. We have found the oldest example of gigantism in a freely swimming filter feeder,” Daley said.
“They may have come together to molt, or they may have lived in a group,” he said. “It is interesting we found so many of them. It shows there was a well developed, rich plankton system in place 480 million years ago.” Arthropods more often are hard to preserve because their innards degrade at a fast pace and their exoskeletons can fall a prey to sediments.
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