This is the type specimen of what I would later name Anomalocaris briggsi, in the field, 10 minutes after being exposed for the first time in about five hundred and nineteen million years. You couldn't wipe the smile of my face for the rest of that day! The coin is an Australian 20 cent piece, about the same size as a Canadian $2 coin. See below for a close up and a better guide to the size (the scale bar is 2 cm).
Wow! Where did you find that one? Is that some sort of protoshrimp?
ReplyDeleteDouble wow! That's the best Anomalocaris I've ever seen... Please, share the locality and story behind it.
ReplyDeleteKate,
ReplyDeleteThey do look like shrimp and that's how they got their name, Anomalo - "strange", caris - "shrimp".
But when complete fossils were found it was realised that what were thought of a shrimp were, in fact, the rather lethal front end of a large Cambrian predator.
A photo of a model of Anomalocaris is at the top right of the blog.
The Anomalocaris is amazing enough...but check out the incredible number of fossils in just a few hundred square centimetres!
ReplyDelete--
Martin