About
200 million years ago, a leech released a slimy mucous cocoon that unwittingly
encased and trapped a bizarre animal with a springy tail, preserving it until
researchers discovered the teardrop-shaped creature in Antarctica recently.
The
cocoon looks like those produced by living leeches, such as the medicinal leech Hirudo
medicinalis. Encased inside was a bell animal that looked similar to
species in the genus Vorticella; its body extends 25 microns (about the
width of some human hairs) with a tightly coiled stalk about twice that long.
And like all eurkaryotes, the organism was equipped with a nucleus — in this
case, a large horseshoe-shaped nucleus inside the main body. (A micron is
one-millionth of a meter.)
This
bell animal lived during the Late Triassic Period, when the Earth was much
warmer, with dense rain forests flourishing along what is today the Transantarctic
Mountain Range where it was found. At the time, Antarctica was part of the
supercontinent Gondwana, though it was still located at high latitudes.
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