Researchers from the University of Leicester and the Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeobiology have made an exciting discovery using advanced scanning technology. They have recreated a “fossil monster” that lived over half a billion years ago, known as Kylinxia.
A collaborative team, including researchers from the University of Leicester, Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeobiology, Yunnan University’s Institute of Palaeontology, the Chengjiang Fossil Museum, and London’s Natural History Museum, re-examined a unique fossil animal found in nearly 520-million-year-old rocks. This reevaluation helps fill a knowledge gap in the evolutionary history of arthropods.
Kylinxia, which has the scientific name, was imaged using a CT scanner that revealed its soft anatomy buried in the rock. Approximately the size of a large shrimp, Kylinxia is notable for its three eyes on the head and a pair of fearsome limbs presumably used to catch prey.
The findings of this study were recently published in the journal Current Biology. CT images of Kylinxia show its body segmentation, large eyes, and extended frontal limbs.
Fossils of marine animals from around half a billion years ago provide insight into the development of complex ecosystems in the world’s oceans. The area around the town of Chengjiang in southern China is renowned for its fossils, including those collected by the Chinese team in this study. The fossils recovered from the Cambrian Chengjiang biota of China’s Yunnan Province have contributed to over 250 species of exceptionally preserved fossil organisms identified.
This latest find is significant for understanding the history of arthropods. Arthropods are animals with segmented bodies, with most bearing a pair of jointed limbs, such as crabs, lobsters, insects, and spiders. While there are many arthropods in the fossil record, most only preserve their hard skeletons. The exceptional preservation of the Kylinxia fossil allows scientists to image its head and identify its six segments.
Lead author Robert O’Flynn, a Ph.D. student at the University of Leicester School of Geography, Geology, and the Environment, expressed amazement at the preservation of the fossil. He highlighted the ability to digitally rotate and analyze the fossil’s head, revealing the resemblance to living arthropods.
Professor Mark Williams, O’Flynn’s primary supervisor at the University of Leicester, lauded the importance of the Kylinxia fossil in understanding early euarthropod evolution. He expressed his hope for similar discoveries to continue being made.
Professor Yu Liu from the Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeobiology recounted the examination of the micro-CT data and the surprising finding of Kylinxia’s six-segmented head. This discovery challenges previous theories on the evolution of arthropod heads.
Dr. Greg Edgecombe from the Natural History Museum added that the uncovering of previously undetected pairs of legs in Kylinxia suggests that living arthropods inherited a six-segmented head from an ancestor over 518 million years ago.
The study titled “The early Cambrian Kylinxia zhangi and evolution of the arthropod head” was authored by Robert J. O’Flynn, Yu Liu, Xiangguang Hou, Huijuan Mai, Mengxiao Yu, Songling Zhuang, Mark Williams, Jin Guo, and Gregory D. Edgecombe, and was published in Current Biology on August 28, 2023.
The Science Foundation of Yunnan Province funded the study.