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Scientists from Sweden’s Uppsala University have pieced together a bizarre marine predator who trolled the seas some 505-million years ago. Hurdia, an extinct species of anomalocaridid, had a giant head, protruding hollow spike-shaped head shield and spiny claws for capturing prey. Bits and pieces of Hurdia have shown up in museums all over the world. Until now, much like their more robust cousin, Anomalocaris, they’ve been left unidentified or wildly mislabeled. Allison Daley, the lead author on the study, is happy to set the record straight and will publish the groups findings in this month’s journal Science.
Scientists from Sweden’s Uppsala University have pieced together a bizarre marine predator who trolled the seas some 505-million years ago. Hurdia, an extinct species of anomalocaridid, had a giant head, protruding hollow spike-shaped head shield and spiny claws for capturing prey. Bits and pieces of Hurdia have shown up in museums all over the world. Until now, much like their more robust cousin, Anomalocaris, they’ve been left unidentified or wildly mislabeled. Allison Daley, the lead author on the study, is happy to set the record straight and will publish the groups findings in this month’s journal Science.Comments
Thanks for the comments Robert. He is definitely a friend and fellow of the arthropods of the Burgess Shale. It is charming to look at the abstracts that came out of the site and how we originally pieced Anomalocaris together - wrong a half dozen times or more.
Cheers,
Heidi
Heidi Henderson | 04/11/09 | 18:11 PM
505-million years - that makes it co-eval with the Burgess Shale. As for putting the bits together, our understanding of Anomalocaris itself underwent the same process, as the Wikipedia article states:
[1] Conway Morris, S. (1998). The crucible of creation: the Burgess Shale and the rise of animals. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. pp. 56–9. ISBN 0-19-850256-7.
- from the man who named Hallucigenia. As he says in the book, he originally reconstructed H. upside down, but it later turned out to be a reasonably normal lobopod.
[2] Whittington, H.B.; Briggs, D.E.G. (1985). "The largest Cambrian animal, Anomalocaris, Burgess Shale, British Columbia". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B. 309: 569--609. doi:10.1098/rstb.1985.0096.