(alt: Video render of Isoxys minor, Middle cambrian bivalved arthropods shown here in orange with a dark aquarium background
Isoxys has a taco shaped carapace enveloping it's entire body like a copepod, the open part of the 'taco' pointing down, its segmented body is completely hidden inside the 'taco' with tiny swimming legs reminiscent of those found in Triops, barely visible poking out of it. and two front appendages that look somewhat like an anomalocaris' claws but pointing up although they are not closely related to anomalocaris. It also has two eyes visible on the front, poking out of the carapace
Tl;Dr a swimming taco with segmented 'tusks' on the front and shrimp like legs poking out the bottom.
The video depicts them flitting around the aquarium from a close-up view with a short focus distance since they are typically only 1 cm long)
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.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
the paper which described this animal made some very bold claims about its anatomy and phylogenetic position. others have questioned these interpretations after looking at the scans used. as always more research is needed
Isoxyids were a group of small and somewhat enigmatic panarthropods found all around the world's oceans during the mid-Cambrian, dating to between about 518 and 504 million years ago.
Their most distinctive feature was the large semi-circular carapace covering their bodies, with some species also having long defensive spines at the front and rear ends. They had spherical stalked eyes and two large appendages on their heads – sometimes shaped like sensory antennae, and sometimes like raptorial front appendages – but it's unclear whether these were anatomically equivalent to the appendages of radiodonts or if they were convergently evolved from a different set of front limbs.
Their body limbs each had two distinct branches (a biramous condition), with a paddle-like structure fringed with gills above, and a slim jointed leg underneath. A small tail fan stuck out from the back of their carapace and was probably used for steering while swimming.
They're generally considered to be more closely related to the true arthropods than the radiodonts were, although their exact position in the arthropod evolutionary tree is uncertain. Usually they're placed as some of the most basal "stem-euarthropods", while other studies have instead classified them as much more "advanced" euarthropods related to early mandibulates.
Isoxys curvirostratus is known from the Chinese Chengjiang fossil deposits (~518 million years ago). About 2-4cm long (0.8-1.6"), it was an active fast-swimming animal with large eyes and raptorial front appendages that curled upwards and inwards, suggesting it was a visual-based predator hunting smaller planktonic animals.
It may have been a vertical migrator, moving between different depths at different times of day.
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.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
514 millions years ago in what will one day be known as the Emu Bay Shale (South Australia), a tiny Isoxys glaessneri encounters the hunter 'Anomalocaris' briggsi.
'Anomalocaris' briggsi was a large suspension-feeding radiodont related to the famous raptorial predator Anomalocaris canadensis. It is one of two radiodont species for which exceptionally detailed fossils of compound eyes are known. The eyes in this species are unsual for radiodonts in that they are not stalked, and protected by a small plate which was likely a modified version of the lateral carapace elements found in hurdiids. The eye morphology suggests that 'A.' briggsi was a mesopelagic species capable of inhabiting depths of several hundred meters, using its acute vision to detect planktonic prey (Paterson et al. 2020).
Isoxys was a cosmopolitan genus of stem-euarthropod in the Lower and Middle Cambrian, characterized by a bivalved shield covering its whole body, two large eyes, and a frontal pair of so-called 'great appendages' probably used for grasping food items. These appendages show similarity with both the frontal appendages of megacheirans and those of radiodonts like Anomalocaris, and its mix of derived and basal anatomical traits (such as biramous appendages but an unclerotized trunk) make it a crucial organism for understanding the early evolution of arthropods (Legg & Vannier 2013, Zhang et al. 2021).
I tried to recreate the feeling of this common yet lovely type of scene in sci-fi movies where a ship or station gets dwarfed by a gigantic object slowly emerging behind it from the shadows - the only difference is that the 'giant' eye here is only about 3 cm wide, though that was still huge for the time.
References and technical details about the reconstruction under the cut:
The soft parts of I. glaessneri are not known (except for the eyes). Trunk appendages are based on I. curvirostratus (Zhang et al. 2021). Great appendages are partially based on I. communis, which may be the adult form of I. glaessneri (Fu et al. 2012); unfortunately, the great appendages of I. communis are poorly preserved (García-Bellido et al. 2009), so frontal appendage morphology was complemented with the better-known I. acutangulus.
The Isoxys is depicted here with only 11 pairs of trunk limbs, instead of the usual 13+ (Zhang et al. 2021). Based on the assumption that the ancestral arthropod grew by post-hatching addition of segments (anamorphosis) (Liu et al. 2016), a reduced number of trunk limbs was judged appropriate given the small size of the specimen (ca. 6.5 mm) and the possible juvenile nature of I. 'glaessneri'.
References:
Fu, D., Zhang, X., Budd, G. E., Liu, W., & Pan, X. (2014). Ontogeny and dimorphism of Isoxys auritus (Arthropoda) from the Early Cambrian Chengjiang biota, South China. Gondwana Research, 25(3), 975–982. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2013.06.007
García-Bellido, D. C., Paterson, J. R., Edgecombe, G. D., Jago, J. B., Gehling, J. G., & Lee, M. S. Y. (2009). The bivalved arthropods Isoxys and Tuzoia with soft-part preservation from the Lower Cambrian Emu Bay Shale Lagerstätte (Kangaroo Island, Australia). Palaeontology, 52(6), 1221–1241. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2009.00914.x
Legg, D. A., & Vannier, J. (2013). The affinities of the cosmopolitan arthropod Isoxys and its implications for the origin of arthropods. Lethaia, 46(4), 540–550. https://doi.org/10.1111/let.12032
Liu, Y., Melzer, R., Haug, J., Haug, C., Briggs, D., Hörnig, M., He, Y., & Hou, X. (2016). Three-dimensionally preserved minute larva of a great-appendage arthropod from the early Cambrian Chengjiang biota. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, 5542–5546. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1522899113
Paterson, J. R., Edgecombe, G. D., & García-Bellido, D. C. (2020). Disparate compound eyes of Cambrian radiodonts reveal their developmental growth mode and diverse visual ecology. Science Advances, 6(49), eabc6721. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc6721
Schoenemann, B., & Clarkson, E. N. k. (2011). Eyes and vision in the Chengjiang arthropod Isoxys indicating adaptation to habitat. Lethaia, 44(2), 223–230. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1502-3931.2010.00239.x
Zhang, C., Liu, Y., Ortega-Hernández, J., Wolfe, J. M., Jin, C., Mai, H., Hou, X. G., Guo, J., & Zhai, D. (2021). Differentiated appendages in Isoxys illuminate origin of arthropodization. Research Square.
