DEEP SEA GOBBLER
Deadly giant crab that ‘terrorised ancient seas’ by sucking prey into circular mouth and then shredding it found
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have discovered a 506 million-year-old giant crab like creature in Canada and it would have been a top predator in the ancient seas.
The fossilised remains date back to the Cambrian period which is known for very small organisms but the creature found is a surprising 30cm long and has been named after the Star Wars Millennium Falcon due to its unusual shape.
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The prehistoric predator has been called Cambroraster falcatus.
It is thought that the creature would have had a pineapple shaped mouth that closed like a camera shutter, a hard spaceship shaped shell and grasping claws.
Cambroraster roughly resemble modern day horseshoe crabs and the first specimens were actually found in 2014 but it has taken scientists a while to determine them as a new species.
Royal Ontario Museum palaeontologists Joe Moysiuk and Jean-Bernard Caron worked as part of the team who made this discovery.
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Hundreds of Cambroraster falcatus fossils have now been found, allowing a detailed depiction of the ancient crab to be put together.
Moysiuk explained in : "With Cambroraster we have everything preserved, and we have specimens showing how different body parts articulated with each other."
Although, the size of the Cambroraster doesn't seem very big by today's standards, back in the Cambrian period it would have been one of the biggest creatures around and a deadly predator.
The fossils were discovered 24 miles away from the famous Burgess Shale site in Kootenay National Park in Canada.
Moysiuk said: "Cambroraster has a remarkable feeding apparatus consisting of a pair of frontal claws and a mouth ringed by toothed plates.
"Prey would have been sucked into the circular mouth and shredded by the multiple rows of large teeth."
Many of the fossils found were singular body parts suggesting that the creatures could have been shedding.
The large number of fossils also suggests that the rocky area of British Columbia would have been a thriving watery ecosystem hundreds of millions of years ago.
The creature and its discovery has been described in the journal
What is the Cambrian period?
Here's what you need to know...
- The Cambrian period is a geological time period
- It lasted for around 55.6million years and started around 541 million years ago
- The ancient period is known for its uniquely well preserved fossils
- Lots of organisms from this time are thought to have been preserved in rocks due to their hard shells
- The Cambrian period is important because it saw a massive diversifcation in life forms as creatures went from being small, simple and often unicellular to more complex
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