And no, Creatards..."Adam and Eve" Did Not Ride Them!

[Anomalocaris]

Residual proteins recovered from fossil t-Rex suggests T. rex steak would taste a lot like chicken.

[robvalue]

New information suggests men actually did live alongside dinosaurs:

http://youtu.be/xBQp5ILqF1g

[ignoramus]

"I remember learning about huge snails... yuck"

I believe your subconscious is confusing reality with the final scene of the original doctor dolittle (1967).
didn't somebody float off in a giant snail ...

[Rhondazvous]

Residual proteins recovered from fossil t-Rex suggests T. rex steak would taste a lot like chicken.

I'm sick of everything tasting like chicken. Why can't it taste like crab or lamb chops,for there ain't no god's sake?

[Anomalocaris]

Residual proteins recovered from fossil t-Rex suggests T. rex steak would taste a lot like chicken.

I'm sick of everything tasting like chicken. Why can't it taste like crab or lamb chops,for there ain't no god's sake?

The chance that this critter, 7 feet long, might taste like crab is getting better and better with each new discovery about it's clad:



It use to be thought the anamalocaris was a unique evolutionary experiment, not closely related to anything in the world today.  Later it became clear it was related to Arthropods, but we weren't sure how closely and in what way.  We thought it might be a sister group of Arthropods, having shared a very recent common ancester with Arthropods, but is not quite an arthropod itself.  But recent discoveries indicates it was an arthropod, and probably more closely related to crabs and lobsters than other Arthropods.

But unlike lobsters and crabs, it didn't have a hard mineralized shell.   It had soft, leathery body, and it swam with a manta ray like motion of flaps on either side of its body.   What clinched it being a real, but very strange arthropod with the discovery it had not one, as illustrated here, but two sets of flaps per body segment.  

So here you go, a 100 lb, 7 foot long ancient shell-less lobster.  Unlike lobsters and crabs, anamalocaris was a agile and proficient swimmer, probably able to easily catch any human swimmer.

So it might be human steak it is eating, not anamalocaris steak we'd be eating.

Okay that's just to scare you,  it's mouth is too small to take big chunks out of you like a shark.  at most it can only take golf ball sized plugs of flesh from you when it catches you. 

[Rhondazvous]

The chance this critter, 7 feet long, might taste like crab is getting better and better with new discoveries:

Yaaay! Then we could have some Jurassic gumbo.

[Hatshepsut]

But recent discoveries indicates it was an arthropod, and probably more closely related to crabs and lobsters than other Arthropods...at most it can only take golf ball sized plugs of flesh from you when it catches you. 

I'm glad it'll be only a big chunk instead of my whole leg; nonetheless I'll be very careful before stepping into the surf at Key Largo. I thought this was the bits & pieces of carbonized critter in the Burgess Shale at Charles Walcott's quarry up in Banff Nat'l Park, but my, those eye stalks! Do they wiggle about to look in different directions? I'm also curious why the mouthparts have those little feathery brushes on them. To me that looks like some kind of filter-feeding or combing through debris, but from what you said they must be spines with that "one-way" feature that keeps prey from getting away from its grasp.

If I remember it also had a round, radicle-like mouth opening, and Stephen Jay Gould in Wonderful Life had said all these bits, found separately, were initially thought to be several different critters. After Ken Ham updates his museum in Kentucky, Adam and Eve will cruise down the River Pishon on its back, on their way out of the Garden of Eden.

[Anomalocaris]

L

But recent discoveries indicates it was an arthropod, and probably more closely related to crabs and lobsters than other Arthropods...at most it can only take golf ball sized plugs of flesh from you when it catches you. 

I'm glad it'll be only a big chunk instead of my whole leg; nonetheless I'll be very careful before stepping into the surf at Key Largo. I thought this was the bits & pieces of carbonized critter in the Burgess Shale at Charles Walcott's quarry up in Banff Nat'l Park, but my, those eye stalks! Do they wiggle about to look in different directions? I'm also curious why the mouthparts have those little feathery brushes on them. To me that looks like some kind of filter-feeding or combing through debris, but from what you said they must be spines with that "one-way" feature that keeps prey from getting away from its grasp.

If I remember it also had a round, radicle-like mouth opening, and Stephen Jay Gould in Wonderful Life had said all these bits, found separately, were initially thought to be several different critters. After Ken Ham updates his museum in Kentucky, Adam and Eve will cruise down the River Pishon on its back, on their way out of the Garden of Eden.

Anamalocaris itself was found in Burgess Shale in banff NP, yes.     It was thought to be so unusual as to be an unique biological branch with few members and not closely related to anything more modern.

But since the 1980s many more different creatures that all clearly belonged to the same anamalocarid family have been discovered in various fossil beds around the world.   It's now clear that the anamalocarids were a large, diverse, and long lived family of creatures.    The first we know were from Cambrian, but they diversified and thrived at least until Devonian age 120 million years later.    This makes them quite an evolutionary success.  They were definitely not a short lived failed evolutionary experiment and oddity that Steven Gauld might have suggested 30 years ago.   We now also know anamalocarids had two flaps per body segment, one above and one below,  and these two flaps were homologous with the biramous appendages of trilobites, as well as the biramous appendages of the inferred common ancestors of other arthropod families.   This suggests their relationship with arthropod family is much closer than was recognized even quite recently, close enough for them to be arthropods.

The drawing show one kind of anamalocarid.   We know some anamalocarids had short, strong feeding appendages with short, sharp spike like growths upon them.   These are interpreted to be grasping and perhaps tearing appendages for feed upon larger prey, perhaps shelled animals like trilobites.   Others had long appendages with feathery growths. These are interpreted to be filter feeding mechanism, perhaps analogous to baleens on whales. 

[Hatshepsut]

Then I'm out of date on my anomalous animalia. I'm unable to think of any current creature that carries compound eyes on a stalk, which seems unnecessary as the bulbous eye itself already offers an episcopal view. But maybe the stalklike projections didn't wiggle, just getting the eye a little farther away so the body doesn't block so much of the rear view. I wonder how they fared once fierce armored fish like Dinychthes were swimming the Devonian seas? I would rather be a trilobite who could conceal itself in the muck at the bottom.

[Anomalocaris]

Crabs carry compound eyes on short stalks.  They can move their compound eye stalks, and retract tgeir eyes into recesses in their shells.

We don't know whether the eye stalks of anamalocarids can move or not.    Also not all anamalocarids appeared to carry their eyes on stalks.  Some appears to have their compound eyes set directly into their heads.   It has been suggested eye stalks in anamalocarids correlates with head appendages suggestive of active predation, where as stalkless eyes set directly into the head correlates with head appendages suggestive of filter feeding.    This suggests putting eyes on stalks is an adaptation geared towards hunting.   Perhaps it sets the eyes further apart for better depth perception.

Also, some predatory anamalocarids had the highest number of facets per compound eye ever discovered in fossil record of any kind.  This suggests the compound eyes of these anamalocarids had the highest visual resolution ever achieved with compound eyes.   This also argues the vision of anamalocarids might have been sharp enough for them to be able to utilize stereoscopic depth perception.

The examples of anamalocarids we have from Devonian are quite small, a few inches long.   It showed considerable specialized adaptation, with generic repetitive body parts of their Cambrian ancester evolved into specialized parts clearly serving different functions depending on where they are along the body.  They were probably still pelagic predators, but were certainly no longer apex predators like they probably were during Cambrian.