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Monsoon rains in northern Arizona this summer woke strange three-eyed crustaceans from decades of sleep.
Hundreds of horseshoe crab-like creatures known as Triops emerged from tiny eggs and began swimming around a temporary lake formed at Wupatki National Monument, about 30 miles from Flagstaff.
Triops eggs can lie dormant for years until enough precipitation arrives and gives them enough time and space to hatch and mature.
“Then they force-feed, reach adulthood in just over a week, breed and lay more eggs to repeat the cycle,” park staff wrote on Facebook.
Triops have an incredibly short life cycle – usually around 90 days – but Wupatki hatchlings only had a few weeks to hatch, mature and lay more eggs before the pool dries up, according to Live Science.
And even before that happened, many became a delicious snack for local nightjars and crows.
Taking up space in the monument’s ceremonial ball field, the two-inch crustaceans stumped visitors and rangers alike.
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Hundreds of horseshoe crab-like creatures known as Triops emerged from tiny eggs after torrential rains and began swimming around a temporary lake formed at Wupatki National Monument in Arizona
Wupakti, which means “big house” in Hopi, is an ancestral Puebloan site managed by the National Park Service.
Built around 500 AD, it consisted of more than 100 rooms and inhabited by members of the Cohonina, Kayenta Anasazi and Sinagua peoples.
The whole site was definitively abandoned in 1225 but when it was inhabited, the lack of natural sources forced the inhabitants to collect rainwater during rare downpours.
The ball field where the Triops have made their home is the northernmost ever discovered in North America.
A sudden downpour in late July flooded the ceremonial ball field at Wupatki, allowing the Triops to awaken from their deep slumber and quickly hatch.
First inhabited over 1,500 years ago by members of the Cohonina, Kayenta Anasazi and Sinagua peoples, the main structure of the Wupatki National Monument consisted of more than 100 rooms. About 30 miles from Flagstaff, it is overseen by the National Park Service
“We were getting reports of tadpoles in the stagnant pool of ball field water on the Wupatki Pueblo Trail,” a Facebook post read.
“It wouldn’t be unusual since recent rains have caused toads to emerge from their underground burrows. However, upon investigation by the rangers, we found something completely different and somewhat unexpected.
Ranger Wupatki Lauren Carter had heard of the Triops outbreak in the Petrified Forest National Park, where she was previously stationed, and knew what to look for.
The tiny crustaceans, the only members of the Notostraca order, were lucky with a heavy accumulation this summer: between 1948 and 2005, Wupatki received an average of about eight inches of rain per year, according to the Western Regional Climate Center. .
In 2020, the monument experienced its driest summer on record – just four inches of rain.
But the downpour in the last days of July 2021 contributed nearly five inches, enough to bring these weird swimmers to life.
“The trios are just another example of how, even under the most difficult conditions, life finds a way,” Park wrote on Facebook.
The life cycle of Triops is incredibly short – typically around 90 days. Once they hatch, it’s a mad rush to binge, reach adulthood in just over a week, breed, and lay more eggs.
With such a short time, Triops developed a unique reproductive technique: While they usually mate via sexual reproduction, females are parthenogenetic and can produce offspring from unfertilized eggs.
Named after the Greek term for “three eyes”, Triops are sometimes referred to as tadpole shrimp because of their long, wavy tail or “shield shrimp” because of their helmet-shaped shell.
They have two large compound eyes and a small ocellus, or “single eye,” in the middle that has photoreceptors that help detect light.
They are also called “dinosaur shrimp” because their outward appearance has changed little from fossils dated to the Devonian period, between 419 million and 359 million years ago, or over 100 million years before the dinosaurs don’t roam the Earth.
Wupatki’s Triops only had a few weeks before the water evaporated. Before that, local crows and nightjars chose them as tasty snacks
However, Carter says it is wrong to think of Triops as “living fossils” because they have evolved over the millennia.
“They have changed, they have evolved,” she told Live Science.
“It’s just that their outward appearance is very similar to what they were millions of years ago.”
The creatures found at Wupatkimay belonged to the species Triops longicaudatus, which is found in short-lived freshwater ponds in North, Central and South America.
Further analysis after the next torrential downpour would be needed to confirm this, Carter added.
Triops are sometimes called shield shrimp, because of their helmet-shaped shell, or “dinosaur shrimp” because their outward appearance has changed little compared to fossils dated to the Devonian period, between 419 and 359 million ago. ‘years.
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