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posted by janrinok on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:07PM   Printer-friendly

Massive new animal species discovered in half-billion-year-old Burgess Shale:

Palaeontologists at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) have uncovered the remains of a huge new fossil species belonging to an extinct animal group in half-a-billion-year-old Cambrian rocks from Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies. The findings were announced on September 8, 2021, in a study published in Royal Society Open Science.

Named Titanokorys gainesi, this new species is remarkable for its size. With an estimated total length of half a meter, Titanokorys was a giant compared to most animals that lived in the seas at that time, most of which barely reached the size of a pinky finger.

"The sheer size of this animal is absolutely mind-boggling, this is one of the biggest animals from the Cambrian period ever found," says Jean-Bernard Caron, ROM's Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology.

Evolutionarily speaking, Titanokorys belongs to a group of primitive arthropods called radiodonts. The most iconic representative of this group is the streamlined predator Anomalocaris, which may itself have approached a meter in length. Like all radiodonts, Titanokorys had multifaceted eyes, a pineapple slice-shaped, tooth-lined mouth, a pair of spiny claws below its head to capture prey and a body with a series of flaps for swimming. Within this group, some species also possessed large, conspicuous head carapaces, with Titanokorys being one of the largest ever known.

Journal Reference:
J.-B. Caron, J. Moysiuk. A giant nektobenthic radiodont from the Burgess Shale and the significance of hurdiid carapace diversity, Royal Society Open Science (DOI: 10.1098/rsos.210664)


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  • (Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday September 14 2021, @12:42AM (3 children)

    by dry (223) on Tuesday September 14 2021, @12:42AM (#1177558) Journal

    The Kootenays are a big region, basically the whole SE of BC. Kootenay lake itself is fairly big.

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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:16AM (2 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:16AM (#1177593) Journal

    Yes, but the article says Kootenay National Park. We used to go up there in the summers with my father to hunt for fossils in the Burgess Shale. Nearly nobody lives around there. It's a beautiful area, like that part of the Canadian Rockies is, but Canadians seem to only want to cluster along the American border instead of in that eden.

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    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by dry on Thursday September 16 2021, @05:36AM (1 child)

      by dry (223) on Thursday September 16 2021, @05:36AM (#1178197) Journal

      Ok, I didn't read the article. Most of that area is beautiful though I never made it that far east.

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 16 2021, @03:56PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday September 16 2021, @03:56PM (#1178297) Journal

        It's worth a visit. In the summer you can often see the Northern Lights. Lake Louise is also gorgeous, though they've started restricting access to it so that the wealthy staying at the lodge on the lake don't have to contend with the rabble.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.