2024-01-08 11:38:08
More than 500 million years ago, a giant worm swam through the ancient seas and ate other animals. This is what a research team concludes from fossil discoveries in northern Greenland. The Fearbeast koprii The worm mentioned was up to 20 centimeters long without antennae and up to about 30 centimeters long, like the group im Journal Science Advances reported. According to researchers, it was one of the first predators.
The Latin genus name Timorebestia means something like “fearsome beast”. Because of their size, the ancient worms were probably high up in the food chain. “This means they were as important in the Cambrian as some of the largest predators in modern oceans, such as sharks and seals,” said Jakob Vinther from the University of Bristol in the UK, who led the team with Tae-Yoon Park from the Korea Polar Research Institute Incheon, South Korea. The Cambrian is the first era of the Earth’s ancient era and stretched from around 539 to around 485 million years ago.
“We already knew that primitive arthropods were the dominant predators in the Cambrian,” reports Vinther. But before trilobites and other arthropods became the rulers of the seas, there were apparently worms, because in the stomachs of some of the 13 fossil specimens of Timorebestia koprii the researchers found remains of extinct arthropods of the genus Isoxys. The fossils come from the Sirius-Passet faunal community, whose fossils were found in northern Greenland. They are mainly molluscs from the Cambrian period, which were deposited in the mud of the sea floor around 518 to 523 million years ago. They are therefore at least ten million years older than the fossils from the Burgess Shale in western Canada, in which the arthropod is up to one meter long Anomalocaris canadensis the remains of another prominent Cambrian raider are preserved.
Even nervous system examined
Using modern electron beam microanalysis with a resolution of up to a thousandth of a millimeter, Vinther and Park’s team were able to visualize many of the mollusc’s structures. “Thanks to the remarkable, exceptional preservation in Sirius Passet, we can also reveal exciting anatomical details, including their digestive system, muscular anatomy and nervous system,” Park said. Very unusual is a large nerve knot, a so-called ganglion, in the abdominal area, as can also be found in today’s arrowworms or chaetognatha. According to researchers, it was most likely an ancestor of modern arrowworms, which are smaller today and also live in the sea.
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However, jaw structures of T. koprii also indicate a relationship with another animal phylum, the jawmouths or Gnathostomulida, modern-day marine worms that grow up to four millimeters long. “We have many more exciting findings to report in the coming years that will help reveal what the earliest animal ecosystems looked like and developed,” says Park.
The so-called Cambrian Explosion gave rise to many new animal phyla, many of which still exist today. In August, researchers presented the earliest known clear representative of a free-swimming jellyfish. The kind Burgessomedusa phasmiformis lived 505 million years ago.
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