- OMFGWTFBBQ!
Many thanks to Slog-tipper Kati for the nightmares I’ll be having tonight. She says it best in her email: “What do you call being terrified, interested and sort of craving seafood at the same time? Because that’s how these creatures make me feel.”
from CosmosMagazine.com:
An international team of paleontologists may have found the evolutionary key to the most diverse species on earth – in the form of a walking, sea-dwelling, armoured ‘cactus’.
The study, published in Nature, documents the discovery of an unusual worm-like creature from Cambrian-era China. The fossil suggests the species to have developed robust, hardened legs before the acquisition of an armoured torso, raising questions about the evolution of arthropods in general, from scorpions to wasps to butterflies.
You MUST check out the illustrations here, which tipper Kati points out look like Delia Deetz’s sculpture in Beetlejuice. I couldn’t agree more.
I love 20-legged armoured butterflies.
Well, except they’re a bit heavy.
And their jetpacks kind of singe when they land on you.
Utterly, utterly wonderful. Thank you!
Intredasting.
The Field Museum footage after one of the links is part of a full-wall display in a room dedicated to Cambrian life as part of an exhibit called “Evolving Planet”. It’s very soothing to just stand there and watch the sea bugs skitter around.
@3 I want to go to there.
@4: Next time you’re in the Windy City, definitely do so.
I have trouble with the exhibit, though, because there’s a room full of fossils from the Fossil Lake deposit, where a paleontology camp I went to excavates. I always end up standing around in the exhibit for half an hour, obsessively telling passersby all about Knightia, Diplomystus, Phareodus, Mioplosus, Priscacara, and the terrifying Lepisosteus.
I love this.