Anomalocaris Canadensis: The Terrifying Giant Shrimp from the Cambrian Period

KOMPAS.com – Giant shrimp with bulging eyes and almost 1 meter long legs lived on this planet half a billion years ago.

This terrifying sea beast was one of the largest creatures that ever lived in the Cambrian period.

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This period was the period of rapid evolution when most of the major animal groups first appeared in the fossil record.

Quoted from the Independent, Wednesday (5/7/2023), this strange sea monster was then given the name Anomalocaris canadensis or ‘strange shrimp from Canada’.

Giant shrimp sighting

The giant shrimp has a segmented body that ends with a caudal fin.

Shrimp also have strong claws to catch prey and a circular mouth lined with teeth-like serrations.

Each of his two eyes sits atop some sort of stalk, adding to his terrifying appearance.

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Coupled with its speed, Anomalocaris is like the great white shark of its time.

Even so, the animal was not strong enough, unable to even open the shell of a primitive marine anthropod called the trilobata.

Whereas previously, Anomalocaris had long been thought to be responsible for several destroyed exoskeletons.

“The ring-shaped mouth of Anomalocaris is unlikely to be used for processing solid food,” said Russel Bicknell, lead author of the American Museum of Natural History, New York.

To find out more, researchers made a 3D reconstruction of Anomalocaris from a well-preserved fossil.

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They also used modern whip scorpions and whip spiders as models.

Later findings indicated that Anomalocaris was most likely a fast swimmer. Shrimp will chase soft prey in the water column.

“Anomalocaris will teach whatever they want, but we found that the dynamics of the Cambrian food web is probably much more complex than we ever thought,” Bicknell said.

The findings are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences.

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2023-07-06 07:00:00
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