Tortillas have been around half a billion years ago. But they’re not corn or flour; They are the hard-shell coverings of now-extinct sea creatures, alata.
According to new research, the Cambrian creature was a genus, a group of jawed arthropods. But beyond its exotic appeal, Order now It swims upside down and has 30 pairs of legs with spines, which may have been used to trap prey in the water column. Team analysis Order now Published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“We are not the first to think [Odaraia] Alejandro Izquierdo-López, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto and lead author of the paper, said in an email to Gizmodo. “We now think this hypothesis is consistent with our new findings; that Order now It uses its spiny legs to catch food from the water column.
The creature was discovered in the Burgess Shale, a large swath of rock in western North America that was part of the ancient seafloor of the Cambrian period about 500 million years ago. The Burgess Shale preserves fragile parts of ancient animals, such as soft tissue, providing paleontologists with very precise and keen observations of ancient life. In the recent study, the team examined about 150 taco samples in taco shells Order nowaccounting for approximately half of all known specimens.
“We don’t think [the shell] Very flexible, but not very difficult,” Izquierdo-López said. “Probably a bit like the shrimp you buy in the supermarket.”
By today’s standards, the Cambrian oceans were teeming with alien life. Life flourished in the world’s oceans approximately 570 million to 530 million years ago, a period known as the Cambrian Explosion.
Many Cambrian organisms are now preserved in the Burgess Shale, including an 8-inch (20-centimeter) Order now. In 2021, a team of researchers announced the discovery of an absolute unit called T.Ganesi; In 2019, another shelled creature was named for its resemblance to Han Solo’s Thousand Eagle.
“The Burgess Shale has been a treasure trove of paleontological information,” Jean-Bernard Caron, a paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada and co-author of the study, said in a press release from the museum. explain. “Thanks to the work we do at ROM on amazing animal fossils, e.g. tocumia and Waptia, we already know a lot about the early evolution of the jaw. However, some other species remain rather mysterious, e.g. Order now.“
In addition to the mandible, the team was also able to analyze the creature’s legs and spine in detail. The team speculates that the earliest animals with mandibles may have used their spines to catch prey, helping them transition from bottom-feeding to eking out an existence throughout the entire body of water.
The Burgess Shale almost certainly holds many more organisms that will reveal the astonishing diversity of Cambrian life. But as recent research shows, there are still plenty of details yet to be discovered in existing specimens.
