Lobster shell, shrimp mouth and crab soccer ball eyes' Beautiful Nightmare & # 39;

[ad_1]

An ancient crab that lived in the time of the dinosaurs was so strange that paleontologists call it the platypus of the crab world.

This newly discovered creature – named Callichimaera perplexa, which means "beautiful puzzled chimera" – had a mixture of body parts. This name refers to the mythical chimera of Greek mythology, which had a lion's head, a goat's body and a snake's tail.

But unlike the mythological version, this weird chimera actually existed: she had the mouth of a shrimp, the claws of a modern crab-frog, the shell of a lobster and the appendages shaped like paddle of a sea scorpion, have discovered the researchers. His eyes were so gigantic that it would be like a human with mirrors the size of a football, said Javier Luque, principal investigator of the study, postdoctoral researcher in paleontology at the University. from Yale and at the University of Alberta in Canada. [Photos: Ancient Crab is the Strangest You’ve Ever Seen]

"[It had] Huge eyes, "said Luque Live Science. They are like Little Red Riding Hood [when she asks the wolf], & # 39; as you have big eyes. What are you using them for? "

In that case, C. perplexa probably used his big eyes, not to mention his powerful claws, to hunt tiny crustaceans, such as black shrimp. "We do not think they were filter filters," Luque said. "We think that they were actually active predators."

Here is an illustration of Callichimaera perplexa, perhaps the strangest crab that has ever existed.

Credit: Oksana Vernygora / University of Alberta

Unexpected discovery

Luque made the first discovery of C. perplexa remains in 2005 while searching for fossils as an undergraduate student in Pesca, a town in the Colombian Andes. "It was things that looked like legs," he said. "It looked like a crab, but I thought it was rather a spider."

After many studies, he discovered that the creature was a strange crab, about a quarter of a size, that lived about 95 million to 90 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. A few years later, he heard about similar fossil crabs found in Wyoming and Morocco. Soon, he had more than 70 specimens of this tiny crustacean, including babies, adults, men and women.

Since these crabs were found in such different places and environments, they were probably very adaptable, Luque said. C. perplexa is so extraordinary, it forms a brand new branch of the crab evolution tree, he added.

Yale paleontologist, Javier Luque, found C. perplexa in Colombia in 2005. Since then, C. perplexa specimens have also been found in Wyoming and Morocco.

Credit: Daniel Ocampo R., Vencejo Films

In addition to resembling a mix of different animals, this life crab also looked like a combination of baby and adult parts. For example, adult individuals had large compound eyes without a cavity; curved claws; mouthparts similar to legs an exposed tail; and a long body – all of which are seen in crab larvae.

In essence, the discovery of C. perplexa shows that "real crabs" have lost and redefined their body plans several times throughout history, said Luque.

"I call it my beautiful nightmare because it was so beautiful and frustrating," Luque said.

The study was published online today (April 24) in the journal Science Advances.

Originally published on Science live.

[ad_2]

Source link