A team from the University of Leicester, Yunnan Key Laboratory for Paleobiology and the Institute of Paleontology at Yunnan University, Chengjiang Fossil Museum, and the Natural History Museum in London, have redescribed a unique fossil animal from rocks nearly 520 million years old that fills in a gap in our understanding of the evolution of animals known as arthropods.
The animal, which has the scientific name Kylinxia, was imaged using a CT scanner which revealed its soft anatomy buried in the rock. The size of a large shrimp, its surprising features include three eyes on the head and a pair of fearsome limbs presumably used to catch prey.Fossils of many kinds of marine animals first appear in rocks from about half a billion years ago and signal a time when complex ecosystems were developing in the world's oceans.
—most famously the trilobites—the vast majority only preserve their hard skeletons. Because the new Chinese material is preserved nearly complete, the team were able to image the head of Kylinxia, identifying six segments: the front one bearing eyes, the second with a pair of large grasping limbs, and the other four each bearing a pair of jointed limbs.
Professor Mark Williams, Robert's primary supervisor at the University of Leicester, said,"Kylinxia, and the Chengjiang biota whence it came, are instrumental to building our understanding of early euarthropod evolution. I like to think that similar discoveries will continue to be made by Robert."
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