- Feb 5, 2002
- 166,654
- 56,277
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Catholic
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Others
Cast the metaphorical (and metaphorically real) net back into the sea 500 million years ago and you’d pull up a variety of strange creatures like trilobites of various sizes and large armored shrimp with crab-like claws.
But you’d also fish up something that looks distinctly familiar—jellyfish, specifically the lampshade-like Burgessomedusa phasmiformis, newly identified by scientists as the oldest free-swimming jellyfish ever discovered.
The new discovery opens up a wealth of information on the structure of the food chain during the Cambrian Explosion, the first great expansion of lifeforms on Earth when natural selection had a party trying to figure out what adaptations worked and which ones didn’t.
Burgessomedusa phasmiformis sported a cube-like hood nearly 8 inches long ringed with 90 stubby tentacles which, like modern jellies, may have been used to paralyze prey with stinging venom.
The new fossil was discovered in one of the most famous of all geological formations relating to paleontology. The Burgess Shale of British Columbia was likely created when a landslide of undersea sediment entombed a section of the seafloor, preventing even the soft-bodied jellyfish from decaying into nothingness.
Continued below.
www.goodnewsnetwork.org
But you’d also fish up something that looks distinctly familiar—jellyfish, specifically the lampshade-like Burgessomedusa phasmiformis, newly identified by scientists as the oldest free-swimming jellyfish ever discovered.
The new discovery opens up a wealth of information on the structure of the food chain during the Cambrian Explosion, the first great expansion of lifeforms on Earth when natural selection had a party trying to figure out what adaptations worked and which ones didn’t.
Burgessomedusa phasmiformis sported a cube-like hood nearly 8 inches long ringed with 90 stubby tentacles which, like modern jellies, may have been used to paralyze prey with stinging venom.
The new fossil was discovered in one of the most famous of all geological formations relating to paleontology. The Burgess Shale of British Columbia was likely created when a landslide of undersea sediment entombed a section of the seafloor, preventing even the soft-bodied jellyfish from decaying into nothingness.
Continued below.
500 Million Year-Old Jellyfish–Oldest Ever Found–May Have Swallowed Prey Whole
In terms of reaching back to point that jellies evolved mobility, Burgessomedusa phasmiformis is the farthest anyone has ever gone.
www.goodnewsnetwork.org
