An international team of scientists has discovered in northern Greenland the fossil of a "giant" predatory worm about 30 centimeters long that inhabited the oceans at least 518 million years ago, reports the University of Bristol in England.
Experts have dubbed the huge specimen for the time (found in the Lower Cambrian fossil locality Sirius Passet in the Nordic country) "Timorebestia koprii", combining "terrifying beast" in Latin and Kopri or Korea Institute of Polar Research, which participated in the study.
The authors of the study, published in the journal Science Advances, say that these large worms could be "among the first carnivorous animals to colonize the water column more than 518 million years ago," implying an ancient dynasty of predators unknown until now.
They possessed huge jaw structures in their mouths (ScienceAdvances).
According to the remains found, the Timorebestia had fins on both sides of the body, long antennae, huge jaw structures in their mouths, and grew to more than 30 centimeters in length, making them "one of the largest swimming animals of the Early Cambrian."
Jakob Vinther, from the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, points out that until now it has been considered that "primitive arthropods were the dominant predators during the Cambrian, such as the (extinct) anomalocharids", reminiscent of shrimps.
However, this team points out that Timorebestia is "a distant, but also close, relative of the living arrowworms or chaetognaths" (today small oceanic predators that feed on zooplankton), which are one of the oldest animal fossils from the Cambrian period.
While arthropods appear in the fossil record between 521 and 529 million years ago, arrows date back at least 538 million years, Vinther says.
"Both the arrowworms and the more primitive Timorebeast were swimming predators. Therefore, we can assume that, in all likelihood, they were the predators that dominated the oceans before arthropods took off," he says.
The last thing they ate
Inside the fossilized digestive system of the Timorebestia, researchers found remains of a common swimming arthropod called Isoxys.
"Our research shows that these ancient ocean ecosystems were quite complex, with a food chain that allowed for various levels of predators," Vinther writes.
They grew more than 30 centimeters long (ScienceAdvances).
"The Timorebeasts were giants of their time and would have been near the top of the food chain," making them equivalent in importance to "some of the major carnivores of the modern oceans, such as sharks and seals," he maintains.
Tae Yoon Park, from the Korean Institute, said his discovery "confirms how arrowworms evolved."
"Living arrowworms have a distinctive nerve center in the belly, called the ventral ganglion," says the field expedition leader, noting that the ganglion has been found preserved in both the Timorebeast and another fossil called Amiskwia.
Park explains that, over several expeditions to the very remote Sirius Passet, more than 82.5° to the north, they have collected "a great diversity of new and interesting organisms", so they will have many more findings to share in the coming years "that will help show what the first animal ecosystems looked like and evolved".
EFE Agency.
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