Ancient multi-legged seafloor predator tracked

From ANI

Washington, Nov 9: Canadian researchers have tracked multi-legged predator that dates back to half-a-billion years, after they followed its fossilized footprints.

The predator, tracked by researchers from the University of Saskatchewan and Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) ruled the seas of the Cambrian period.

"Short of finding an animal at the end of its trackway, it's really very rare to be able to identify the producer so confidently," said Nicholas Minter, lead author of the article on the study.

The research team worked with samples gathered from the Burgess Shale, famed for its exquisitely detailed fossils from the Cambrian Explosion, a time when life underwent a dramatic change with the appearance of all the modern groups of organisms and some bizarre creatures.

Fossils from the Burgess Shale record not only the animals themselves - are exceedingly rare because most of them had soft bodies - but also the trackways they left behind while hunting on the sea floor.

"Most researchers have focused on the body fossils of the Burgess Shale," said study co-author Gabriela M ngano.

"By studying its trackways, trails and burrows, we may dramatically impact our understanding of these ancient ecosystems."

Key to the research were trackways collected during a field expedition in 2008 led by ROM curator Jean-Bernard Caron.

Fossil trackways and other fossilized evidence of animal activities such as burrows, bite marks and feces are known as trace fossils. These provide evidence of where animals were living and what they were doing, but the full identity of the producers is rarely known.

In this case, size of the tracks and the number of legs needed to make them left only one suspect: Tegopelte gigas. This caterpillar-like animal sported a smooth, soft shell on its back and 33 pairs of legs beneath. One of the largest arthropods of its time, it could reach up to 30 cm in length.

By analyzing both the fossilized remains of Tegopelte and the trackways, the researchers were able to reconstruct how this animal would have moved.

The creature was capable of skimming rapidly across the seafloor, with legs touching the sediment only briefly, supporting the view that Tegopelte was a large and active top carnivore.

The study has been published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.


Copyright Asian News International/DailyIndia.com