Aug 5
i feel like i have the same vibes as this guy
Loading...
seen from Australia
seen from Russia
seen from Russia
seen from China
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Canada
seen from Switzerland
seen from Türkiye
seen from China
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
i feel like i have the same vibes as this guy
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
How do you get an entire animal wrong? Twice. Charles Walcott found the first fossils of Hallucigenia sparsa in 1911 and called it a bristle worm. In 1977 Simon Conway Morris realized it was something stranger and gave it its striking new name, but he reconstructed it upside-down and back-to-front. Spikes as legs. Tentacles waving from the back. What he called the head was actually a decaying gut. The upside-down was fixed in 1991 when a Chinese specimen revealed a second row of legs. In 2015, better Burgess Shale fossils finally showed the real head at the opposite end, with a pair of tiny eyes and a ring of teeth around the mouth. Named for its bizarre, dream-like appearance. About the size of your fingernail. A Cambrian lobopodian and a distant cousin of modern velvet worms. Art by Andrey Atuchin.
Hallucigenia
Of course, I had to have my first post be about the creature this blog is named for. Look at this horrible worm.
This thing is so weird, even amongst the weirdness of the Cambrian, that scientists were unsure of which part was the head and which was the tail, or for that matter which set of appendages it used to walk.
They belong to the clade Panarthropoda which includes modern arthropods, tardigrades, and velvet worms, but is part of an extinct group of worms in this clade called lobopodians. Lobopodians are all pretty weird, essentially being described as marine worms with stubby legs. In fact we spent so much time trying to figure out just what this thing is, we still don't know that much about how it lived, other than educated guesses.
It's possible that the little tentacle appendages near its face would pick up particles to pass to the mouth, or possibly hollow tubes on each tentacle were themselves individual mouths connected to the gut.
I do think it's aptly named, appearing as something you might see while on acid, but being only 1-2 inches long, it's not quite as terrifying as some of my other favorite specimens from the Cambrian explosion. I think I like it so much because I'm just tickled by the image of a couple paleontologists looking at this fossil and going "which part is the head and which is the butt?" and having that be an entire topic of research.
Hellooooo
I like natural history. This is a place for me to document whatever creature I'm currently obsessed with and felt like researching. If you are a fellow nerd you may enjoy <3
Hey guys for Jurassic July (I’m late for Jurassic June sorry) I’m gonna start another 12 month wallpaper challenge!
Eras of Life Part 1: Hallucigenia sparsa (Cambrian Period)
Hallucigenia was a lobopod named for its dreamy appearance. When it was first discovered, we didn’t know which way was which, so we constructed it with stilt legs and a long tail. We now know that the stilts were actually spines and its “head” was actually decaying matter squeezed out of its butt when it died
Other featured animals: Anomalocaris canadensis, Omnidens amplus
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Irrigation machines kind of look like hallucigenia, right? It's not just me??
20260411 Nagoya Science Museum 2 by Bong Grit Via Flickr: こちらはハルキゲニア。著名な作家さんとは関係ないですね。 Photo taken at FUJI Nagoya Science Museum, Naka ward, Nagoya city, Aichi pref.
What even ARE the Jarts?
I’m still baffled.
I mean I know.
But the question stands.