As detailed in this week’s Current Biology, researchers at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and the Royal Ontario Museum drew on roughly 5. Burgess Shale fossil bed in British Columbia, in order to identify Capinatator praetermissus as a new genus and species of arrow worm.
Fossilized chaetognaths that include evidence of soft tissue are incredibly rare—the researchers say only two other unequivocal specimens have been reported, and both from fossil beds in China. Many of the specimens in the new paper feature evidence of soft tissue, which allowed scientists to piece together the anatomy of the animal’s gut and musculature. According to the researchers, the animal’s head configuration is “unique,” with roughly 2. It probably captured its prey by flapping its graspy bits toward one another, forcing its helpless victims into its anus- shaped mouth. Capinatator may have only been four inches long, but it still would have been a “terrifying sight” to small marine critters alive at the time, according to study co- author Jean- Bernard Caron.“The large body size and high number of grasping spines in C. Earlier forms like this one might have prowled closer to the seafloor, and been larger than their contemporaries.
Obviously, more fossil specimens from the same time period could help confirm or refute that idea. But more importantly—dang, look at that anus- eye.