They found the fossil of a monstrous predator of the seas that lived millions of years ago

A team of paleontologists from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) has Discovered in the Canadian Rockies the remains of a fossil of a new extinct species that lived in the Cambrian half a billion years ago.

The fossil, excavated in Kootenay National Park (Canada), It belongs to a new species called Titanokorys gainesi, which is distinguished by its large size.

Details of the discovery are published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

With a estimated length of half a meter, Titanokorys was a giant compared to most of the animals that lived in the seas at that time, most of which were barely the size of a little finger.

“The size of this animal is absolutely breathtaking, it is one of the largest Cambrian animals ever found,” said Jean-Bernard Caron, Richard M. Ivey curator of invertebrate paleontology at the ROM.

From an evolutionary standpoint, Titanokorys belong to a group of primitive arthropods called radiodons, the most iconic representative of which is the keeled predator Anomalocaris, which may have reached a meter in length.

Like all radio broadcasts, the Titanokorys had multi-faceted eyes (common in modern insects and crustaceans), a mouth lined with pineapple-slice-shaped teeth, a pair of thorny claws under the head for catching prey, and a body with fins for swimming.

Within this group, some species also had large, striking shells on their heads, with Titanokorys being one of the largest known.

Titanokorys are part of a subgroup of the radiodons, the húrdids, characterized by an incredibly long head covered with a three-part shell that has taken on countless forms. The head is so long in relation to the body that these animals are in reality little more than swimming heads “says Joe Moysiuk, co-author of the study and doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto.

The reason why some radioodonts evolved into such a bewildering variety of shell shapes and sizes is not yet fully understood, but the large, flattened shell shape of Titanokorys suggests that this species has adapted to near life. of the seabed, note the authors. .

These enigmatic animals undoubtedly had a great impact on the ecosystems of the Cambrian seabed. Their limbs in the front looked like multiple rakes stacked up and would have been very effective in bringing whatever they caught with their tiny thorns in their mouths. The huge dorsal shell could have functioned like a plow, ”explains Caron.

The fossils for this study were collected around Marble Canyon, north of Kootenay National Park, on various ROM expeditions.

Discovered less than a decade ago, this area produced a wide variety of Cambrian period animals, including a smaller and more abundant parent of Titanokorys called Cambroraster falcatus, named after the famous Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.

According to the authors, the two species could have competed for similar prey on the seabed.

(with information from the EFE)

KEEP READING: