July 4th 2023.
Half a billion years ago, a massive shrimp roamed the seas. Anomalocaris canadensis, or "weird shrimp from Canada", was as long as three feet, with bulging eyes on stalks, leading many to believe it was a fearsome predator. However, a recent study shows it was not as tough as first thought.
By using extraordinarily well-preserved fossils from Canada's Burgess Shale, a global team of researchers created a 3D reconstruction of canadensis and its two front "claws". They concluded that while the shrimp was able to use the appendages to stretch out and grab prey, they would not have been powerful enough to crush whatever was on the menu.
Lead author Dr. Russell Bicknell of the American Museum of Natural History said, "That didn't sit right with me, because trilobites have a very strong exoskeleton, which they essentially make out of rock, while this animal would have mostly been soft and squishy."
The team also used computational fluid dynamics to place the 3D model in a virtual current, which gave insight into the shrimp's swimming abilities. Results showed that canadensis was likely a speedy swimmer, zooming after soft prey with its front appendages outstretched.
This conclusion comes during the time of the Cambrian explosion, when life on Earth was rapidly expanding and most major animal groups started to appear. Dr. Bicknell said, "Previous conceptions were that these animals would have seen the Burgess Shale fauna as a smorgasbord, going after anything they wanted to, but we're finding that the dynamics of the Cambrian food webs were likely much more complex than we once thought."
Now, the question is what did crush the trilobites? It may take some more time to figure out, but this new study of Anomalocaris canadensis provides fascinating insight into the early life of the Cambrian period.
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