The extinct , carnivorous crustaceanThylacares brandonensisroamed the seas 435 million yr ago , grab its fair game with setose limb and crushing it to number before feasting . The new species wasdescribedinBMC Evolutionary Biologythis week .
Named after the Brandon Bridge Formation near Waukesha , Wisconsin , where it was discovered , T. brandonesisis the former illustration of the puzzling Thylacocephala group ( a member of the extinct clan is pictured above ) . These sea critter were mostly incur in the Jurassic . Some thylacocephalans are consider so bizarre , scientists bedevil them with barnacles and shrimp larvae , Science explains .
The eyeball with leg pictured above is a Jurassic thylacocephalan from about 150 million years ago calledClausocaris lithographica , found in Solnhofen , Germany . The general thylacocephalan body plan consists of a large cuticle - like carapace covering most of the consistence : Its trunk is only visible at the rear , and foresightful raptorial appendages elongate out from beneath . These features evoke that they were either mobile predators , float in search of prey , or lying in wait predator who lurked under cover , grabbing prey with their long claws .
" T. brandonensiswas probably an actively hunting vulture , which enamour the fair game with its front claw and crushed it into smaller pieces with the swelling nearer its mouthparts,”saysCarolin Haug from LMU Munich .
The fogey of this fresh discovered species tug this group of arthropods back to the Silurian period hundreds of millions of years earlier . Many cardinal Thylacocephala characteristics are found inT. brandonesis , specially the enceinte shield covering the body , though it had plenty of its own peculiar features . Its bulbous eyes are small and stalked , unlike the large , firm colonial eyes of other thylacocephalans . Also , the characteristic extremity are present and structurally similar , but they ’re much small than those of the Jurassic species .
" This other , Silurian , example of Thylacocephala is in many ways much less extreme than the more recent Jurassic metal money , ” Haug explicate in anews release . “ It still has normal - sized eyes in contrast to the very enlarged I that came afterward , and shorter front claws inT. brandonensiscompared to the extremely elongated ones in more late Jurassic representatives . "
Furthermore , the muscle structure and ramification morphology of the fresh specie intimate that it used its claw - like appendages to catch up with prey in a similar way to modern remipedes – blind , centipede - looking crustaceans that can be found swimming in brine - fill up caves today . An lesson of Remipedia is depict below : Speleonectes tanumekesis maybe the closest living relatives of the thylacocephalans .
[ ViaBioMed Central ]
trope : Haug et al . , BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 ( top , halfway ) , van der Ham et al . 2011 , CC2.5 ( bottom ) via BioMed Central
