An international team of paleontologists has identified a new species of worm that lived in present-day southern China about 515 million years ago . The animal, which was one of the first animals on Earth to develop armor to protect itself from predators, possessed a strange soft body covered with 72 individual spines and 15 pairs of legs. The finding has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
The researchers from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) and the University of Yunnan (China) have named the new species of worm as Collinsium ciliosum or Monster Hairy Collins (in honor of the paleontologist Desmond Collins, the first discoverer of its fossils ).
The worm belongs to the group of early animals and lived during the Cambrian explosion, a period of rapid evolutionary development about 500 million years ago . Examination of its remains indicates that it is a distant ancestor of modern velvet worms or onychophores, common in tropical forests around the world.
“Modern velvet worms are all quite similar in general body organization and not so exciting in lifestyle, but during the Cambrian, distant relatives of velvet worms were incredibly diverse and surprisingly unique. variety of strange shapes and sizes ”, explains Javier Ortega-Hernández, co-author of the study.
From the remains, a very well-preserved fossil that included details of the organization of the entire body, the digestive tract, or a delicate layer of hair-like structures in the front, the researchers conclude that it had a soft, squishy body with six pairs. of front legs like feathers, and nine pairs of hind legs ending in claws. Being an easy target for predators , the worm developed an incredible defense mechanism with up to 72 sharp points covering its body like armor, representing the first time this evolutionary pattern has been seen in a mainly soft-bodied group.
It is impossible not to remember Hallucigenia, another species of Cambrian worm. “Both creatures are Lobopods or Leg Worms, but the ‘Monster Collins’ looks like ‘Hallucigenia’ on steroids . It had the heaviest armor to protect its body, with up to five pointed spines per pair of legs, instead of two from ‘Hallucigenia’. Unlike ‘Hallucigenia’, the extremities in the front of the body of ‘Monster Collins’ were also covered with fine feathers or bristles that were used for a specialized type of feeding of the water column ”, clarifies Ortega-Hernández.
