[Animals] They reveal new details of one of the strangest animals that existed

[#Wittels-]

500 million years ago lived in the seas one of the strangest animals that are known. It was expected, until now, that it was a unique species since no fossil record had found a family for it. That could be changing thanks to the dogged work of a Cambridge University paleontologist.

One of the strangest animals known so far, it will be seen 541 to 485 million years ago. It is the arthropod Opabinia regalis, a small animal that lived in mares during the Cambrian period. It had five eyes and a long trunk that ended with a pincer with sharp teeth. So far there are no fossil records that seem to indicate that this opabinia had relatives.

However, that changed thanks to the obstinacy of Stephen Pates, a paleontologist at the University of Cambridge. Several years ago, in the Cambrian Wheeler Formation in Utah, United States, the only fossil of Utaurora comosa was found, an animal that experimented millions of years after Opabinia regalis. (You can read: Women of science: these are some of the "hard" in Colombia)

 

In 2008, after research work, a group of scientists classified Utaurora comosa as a radiodont. But Pates disagreed with that classification. Since then I have worked with researchers from the universities of Harvard, Oxford and Lausanne (Switzerland) re-examining the fossil. Pates' team compared the 125 features of the Utaurora fossil with those of more than 50 groups of living and extinct arthropods.

 

We found? That the features of this animal did not fit so much with those of radiodonts, as had been said 14 years ago. Rather, the researchers say, it shares many more with opabinia. The findings to support that sustainability are found in a study that was published two days ago in Proceedings B, one of the scientific journals of The Royal Society. (You may be interested in: First indigenous university in the Colombian Amazon: the struggle of María Herrera)

 

Although radiodonts were also quite strange animals, the utaurora did not share the same head segments, a feature that brings it closer to the opabinia. What does this mean? basically: “that opabinia was not the only opabiniid. It was not as unique a species as we thought," Pates said in a statement.

 

Link: https://www.elespectador.com/ciencia/revelan-nuevos-detalles-de-uno-de-los-animales-mas-extranos-que-existio/