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Artistic reconstruction of Callichimaera perplexa. (Elissa Martin / Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History)
Scientists have discovered a new species of crab that was swimming in the sea 95 million years ago.
The little pocket crab, called Callichimaera perplexa, was very different from its modern cousins. This crab had a tiny lobster shell, legs flattened like oars and huge Pound Puppies magpies sticking out of his head, which researchers say shows that the creature was actively using his eyes for everything she did to live.
Some researchers are not the only ones to have attracted the attention of comics, this is also what the ancient animal means for science. Javier Luque, a postdoctoral paleontologist from Yale and Alberta Universities, said the "cute" and "unusual" crustacean would get scientists to "rethink what's a crab".
"This gives us information on how new body shapes can evolve over time," Luque said in an interview with the Washington Post.
Luque said he made this discovery in 2005 in the mountains of Pesca, Boyaca, Colombia. Luque, then undergraduate student in geology, said that he was looking for fossils when he discovered a collection of specimens of crustaceans – shrimps, lobsters and large bulbous eye crabs.
Luque and his research team, who studied the well-preserved fossils discovered in Colombia and the United States, published their findings on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. The research provides insight into a creature so special that it has been dubbed "the platypus of the crab world," according to a press release.
So what do we know about this wide-eyed creature?
The crab lived during the Middle Cretaceous period – when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, the land masses were moving and the oceans were taking shape. And depending on where the fossils were found, he lived in what is now Colombia, North Africa and the United States, specifically in Wyoming.
Her name, Callichimaera perplexa, means "beautiful perplexed chimera", an allusion to a Greek mythological creature that had parts of the body of different animals. Logic. Researchers believe that the crab had a "mosaic of body parts," consisting of unprotected compound eyes, a spindle-shaped body, and paw shaped mouthparts, suggesting that the larval traits remain intact until the Adulthood, explained Luque.
The body of the crab was about the size of a quarter of a piece.
Artistic reconstruction of Callichimaera perplexa. (Oksana Vernygora / University of Alberta)
His eyes were so big that, had he been human, he would have eyes as big as footballs.
His legs were built more for swimming, not for crawling.
His claw-shaped claws made him a powerful little hunter.
And if the crab had lived about 95 million years, he probably could have gone to Hollywood.
Luque, the main author of the study, told Live Science that "I call it my beautiful nightmare because it was so beautiful and so frustrating" for researchers to understand it .
Heather Bracken-Grissom, an evolution biologist with Florida Internal University specializing in decapods, said that today there are more than 7,000 species of crabs.
This "bizarre discovery," she explained, will allow scientists to reassess what they know about them.
"This new transitional fossil makes us rethink how crabs have evolved over time as they introduce this unique bodily form that we did not know before," Bracken-Grissom told the Washington Post. She said that it reveals "an early lineage in the crab of life".
(With the exception of the title, this story was not changed by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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