ANOMALOCARIS
Up to a metre long with eyes on stalks and downward curving appendages, Anomalocaris was certainly a bizarre animal, yet it was also the top predator of is day.
Anomalocaris, meaning “odd shrimp” is somewhat misleading. Upon its discovery in the Burgess Shale by Charles Doolittle Walcott in the early 1900′s. Anomalocaris’ mouth, appendages and body were though to be different species of animal. The appendages were mistaken for the body of a primitive prawn or shrimp like creature, hence the name meaning odd shrimp. Its mouth was thought to be an ancient type of jellyfish and it’s body, a species of sponge. It wasn’t until much later in the 1960′s that Walcott’s finds were reevaluated and Anomalocaris was finally pieced together.
This strange creature existed in the middle Cambrian period and is indeed a pivotal discovery. The Burgess Shale holds a huge amount of Cambrian life, during this period the diversity of life erupted, known as the Cambrian explosion. Life began to get more complex and developed and until the discovery of Anomalocaris it was unknown as to why evolution began to accelerate.
The Cambrian saw the evolution of the eye take place, the ability of sight led to the development of active hunters and in response prey had to evolve better defences. This led to an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey. The development of sight and evidence of a skilled hunter in the Cambrian seas has led many researchers to pin this down as a trigger for the Cambrian explosion of life.
During the time of Anomalocaris, life on land was almost non existent, anything the sea washed out was left to decay as nothing was there to feed on it.
Despite the emptiness on land, the oceans thrived with almost alien like creatures compared to what we are familiar with today and in these peculiar oceans, anomalocaris dominated.
This super predator could reach up to a metre long, but some specimens found in China have gone beyond that. Whatever its size, the animal was still up to 10 times longer than anything else at the time.