New Cambrian 'Penis Worm' Discovered

by Megan Gannon, News Editor | May 06, 2015 12:01am ET

You might have heard of vagina dentata — the mythical"toothed vagina" born of male paranoia. But have you heard of the carnivorous penis-shaped worm known as Ottoia prolifica? This 505-million-year-old phallus-like creature actually had a throat full of teeth.

Now, scientists who took a close look at the teeth of fossilized penis worms (or priapulids) have discovered a new species.

The paleontologist Charles Walcott first discovered O. prolifica in 1911 in the Burgess Shale, a geologic formation in the Canadian Rockies that contains fossils of bizarre critters such as trilobites and velvet worms from the middle Cambrian period.

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Evolution 'favours bigger sea creatures'

20 February 2015 Last updated at 00:02

By Jonathan WebbScience reporter, BBC News

Whales and other modern sea animals tend to be much larger than Cambrian sea creatures

The animals in the ocean have been getting bigger, on average, since the Cambrian period - and not by chance.

That is the finding of a huge new survey of marine life past and present, published in the journal Science.

It describes a pattern of increasing body size that cannot be explained by random "drift", but suggests bigger animals generally fare better at sea.

In the past 542 million years, the average size of a marine animal has gone up by a factor of 150.

It appears that the explosion of different life forms near the start of that time window eventually skewed decisively towards bulkier animals.

Measured by volume, today's tiniest sea critter is less than 10 times smaller than its Cambrian counterpart; both are minuscule, sub-millimetre crustaceans. But at the other end of the scale, the mighty blue whale is more than 100,000 times the size of the largest animal the Cambrian could offer: a trilobite less than half a metre long.

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Rare Fossilized Embryos More Than 500 Million Years Old Discovered By Researchers

April 11, 2014

Jeff Sossamon, University of Missouri

The Cambrian Period is a time when most phyla of marine invertebrates first appeared in the fossil record. Also dubbed the “Cambrian explosion,” fossilized records from this time provide glimpses into evolutionary biology when the world’s ecosystems rapidly changed and diversified. Most fossils show the organisms’ skeletal structure, which may or may not give researchers accurate pictures of these prehistoric organisms. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found rare, fossilized embryos they believe were undiscovered previously. Their methods of study may help with future interpretation of evolutionary history.

“Before the Ediacaran and Cambrian Periods, organisms were unicellular and simple,” said James Schiffbauer, assistant professor of geological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. “The Cambrian Period, which occurred between 540 million and 485 million years ago, ushered in the advent of shells. Over time, shells and exoskeletons can be fossilized, giving scientists clues into how organisms existed millions of years ago. This adaptation provided protection and structural integrity for organisms. My work focuses on those harder-to-find, soft-tissue organisms that weren’t preserved quite as easily and aren’t quite as plentiful.”

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Phallus-shaped fossils identified as new species

 By Michelle Warwicker, Reporter, BBC Nature

Scientists have revealed insights into a peculiar, phallus-shaped creature discovered at a fossil site in Canada.

The animal has been identified as Spartobranchus tenuis, a species from the Cambrian period that was previously unknown to science.

artist impression

The odd-looking creature was an ancient relative of acorn worms that exist today, according to researchers.

Their study, published in the journal Nature, is the first full description of the prehistoric animal.

Remains of soft-bodied worms were found in the Burgess Shale fossil beds in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada throughout the last century.

But now researchers studying the 505 million years old fossils have for the first time given a detailed insight into the lives of the bizarre beasts.

The prehistoric marine creatures were around the size of an earthworm, "but unlike an earthworm that's segmented from its front end to its back end, these guys just had three distinct body segments," said research team member Dr Christopher Cameron from the University of Montreal, Canada.

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/21745029