#panarthropoda

stuff keeps getting stuck to poor batillipes lusitanus

everything from rocks to stones to glomch and even other people! and she can't deliberately get it off of her skin...she has to wait for it to naturally fall off, everytime!!

one time a whole cruise ship got attached to her and she had to drag it around for 5 weeks! it was painful and tiring but at the end she came out faster and stronger than ever!!!

hooray I guess?

glorpiness rating : a foot is like a structure akin to a hand but adapted for walking and supporting the body

footage by Rafael Martín-Ledo (I think?). link to original video (youtube)

Collinsium was a genus of luolishaniid from the Early to Middle Cambrian. Its type and only species is C. ciliosum. Its known specimens were found in the Hongjingshao Formation in China.

Collinsium honors Desmond Collins, an invertebrate paleontologist who has contributed significantly to the field, including figuring out Anomalocaris's real appearance. The species name, ciliosum, means "hairy" in Latin.

There are several known specimens of Collinsium, which are all in great condition and preserve many soft tissues and sensory hairs. The animal reached around 85mm in length. Its body has 15 sets of biomineralized sclerites, which are composed of spines of various lengths that increase in size towards the center of the body. Besides the first set, each row is comprised of five spines. It has six long appendages near the head that each have roughly 30 bristle-like spines. The rest of the limbs are shorter and spineless, instead ending with a small hooked claw. The front section of the body is covered densely in hairs which become much sparser after the sixth appendage pair.

Collinsium is unique among lobopodians, as most are known to have sclerite sets comprised of only one pair of spines or plates. It also would have been subject to more to visual predation than its relatives given its extravagant armor. It was recovered as a member of Luolishaniidae, a clade of superarmored lobopodians, due to its similarity to Luolishania and Collinsovermis.

Anomalocaris

Anomalocaris was the largest--at up to two meters long--predatory animal of the Cambrian period, slightly over 500 million years ago. A close relative of today's arthropods, it had some of the most advanced eyes of any known organism and was probably an active predator. However, despite popular belief, it probably did not prey on trilobites very often, because its frontal appendages and oral cone were too soft to damage the highly mineralized trilobite cuticle.

This image is based on Anomalocaris saron of Chengjiang and Anomalocaris briggsi of Emu Bay. I had intended to use it in my final presentation for my palaeontology class, but technical problems made that difficult. I might clean it up on my computer later, but I have the work ethic of an exceptionally lazy tapeworm.

References:

Chen, J., Ramsköld, L., Zhou, Q., 1994, Evidence for monophyly and arthropod affinity of Cambrian giant predators: Science, v. 254, p. 1304-1308. doi:10.1126/science.264.5163.1304

Daley, A. C. and Bergström, J., 2012, The oral cone of Anomalocaris is not a classic “peytoia”: Naturwissenschaften, v. 99, p. 501-504. doi: 10.1007/s00114-012-0910-8

Daley, A. C., Paterson, J. R., Edgecombe, G. D., García-Bellido, D. C., and Jago, J. B., 2013, New anatomical information on Anomalocaris from the Cambrian Emu Bay Shale of Australia and a reassessment of its inferred predatory habits: Palaeontology, v. 56 (6), p. 1179-1340. doi: 10.1111/pala.12029