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

Palaeontologists on the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) have uncovered the stays of an enormous new fossil species belonging to an extinct animal group in half-a-billion-year-old Cambrian rocks from Kootenay National Park within the Canadian Rockies. The findings had been introduced on September 8, 2021, in a examine revealed in Royal Society Open Science.

Named Titanokorys gainesi, this new species is exceptional for its dimension. With an estimated total size of half a meter, Titanokorys was a large in comparison with most animals that lived within the seas at the moment, most of which barely reached the scale 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 talking, Titanokorys belongs to a bunch of primitive arthropods known as radiodonts. The most iconic consultant of this group is the streamlined predator Anomalocaris, which can itself have approached a meter in size. Like all radiodonts, Titanokorys had multifaceted eyes, a pineapple slice-shaped, tooth-lined mouth, a pair of spiny claws under its head to seize prey and a physique with a collection of flaps for swimming. Within this group, some species additionally possessed massive, conspicuous head carapaces, with Titanokorys being one of many largest ever identified.

“Titanokorys is part of a subgroup of radiodonts, called hurdiids, characterized by an incredibly long head covered by a three-part carapace that took on myriad shapes. The head is so long relative to the body that these animals are really little more than swimming heads,” added Joe Moysiuk, co-author of the examine, and a ROM-based Ph.D. pupil in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology on the University of Toronto.

Why some radiodonts developed such a bewildering array of head carapace sizes and shapes remains to be poorly understood and was doubtless pushed by a wide range of elements, however the broad flattened carapace kind in Titanokorys suggests this species was tailored to life close to the seafloor.

“These enigmatic animals certainly had a big impact on Cambrian seafloor ecosystems. Their limbs at the front looked like multiple stacked rakes and would have been very efficient at bringing anything they captured in their tiny spines towards the mouth. The huge dorsal carapace might have functioned like a plough,” added Dr. Caron, who can also be an Associate Professor in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Earth Sciences on the University of Toronto, and Moysiuk’s Ph.D. advisor.

All fossils on this examine had been collected round Marble Canyon in northern Kootenay National Park by successive ROM expeditions. Discovered lower than a decade in the past, this space has yielded an incredible number of Burgess Shale animals relationship again to the Cambrian interval, together with a smaller, extra ample relative of Titanokorys named Cambroraster falcatus in reference to its Millennium Falcon-shaped head carapace. According to the authors, the 2 species might need competed for comparable bottom-dwelling prey.

The Burgess Shale fossil websites are positioned inside Yoho and Kootenay National Parks and are managed by Parks Canada. Parks Canada is proud to work with main scientific researchers to increase information and understanding of this key interval of earth historical past and to share these websites with the world via award-winning guided hikes. The Burgess Shale was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 resulting from its excellent common worth and is now a part of the bigger Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.

The discovery of Titanokorys gainesi was profiled within the CBC’s The Nature of Things episode “First Animals.” These and different Burgess Shale specimens shall be showcased in a brand new gallery at ROM, the Willner Madge Gallery, Dawn of Life, opening in December 2021.

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Royal Ontario Museum