Helmet-headed Cambrian sea monster sucked up prey like a Roomba

[Judi Lynn]

By Mindy Weisberger about 6 hours ago

Its size is "absolutely mind-boggling," said the scientist who described the fossil.



Titanokorys gainesi was one of the largest marine predators during the Cambrian period. (Image credit: Animation by Lars Fields, copyright Royal Ontario Museum )

A creature with a massive head shield, sand-raking claws and a circular tooth-filled mouth swept across the ocean bottom half-a-billion years ago, hoovering up prey like a living Roomba.

Measuring nearly 2 feet (50 centimeters) long, Titanokorys gainesi — a newfound genus and species — had a flattened body and a broad head that made up approximately two-thirds of its total length, researchers reported in a new study.

Titanokorys was one of the biggest ocean predators of the Cambrian period (543 million to 490 million years ago) and is the largest-known Cambrian seafloor predator, according to a new study. Compared with most other sea life at the time, its size was "absolutely mind-boggling," lead study author Jean-Bernard Caron, a curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, said in a statement.

"It's like a swimming head in a big helmet," Caron told Live Science. "It's a very unusual shape."

Caron and study co-author Joe Moysiuk, a doctoral candidate in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto, pieced together the long-extinct creature's anatomy from 12 fossil fragments collected at the Burgess Shale, a fossil deposit in British Columbia, Canada, dating to about 508 million years ago.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/cambrian-giant-swimming-head.html?utm_source=notification

[eppur_se_muova]

1. My first thought was, "it sure reminds me of Anomalocaris" and the article mentions that.

Apparently, Anomalocaris is being reevaluated, in terms of its feeding habits and even exoskeletal structure.

But Anomalocaris lacked the hood-like carapace, and apparently fed in the water column; the new discovery appears to be a bottom feeder. So new genus. But viewed from below, they sure look like variations on a theme.

[myccrider]

2. They are variations on the theme (aka order) of

radiodonta, according to the article, which includes anomolacaris.

Human order is primate. We’re a variation on that theme.