A Giant Cambrian Sea Monster Was Discovered. Wanna See How It Looks? So Scary, Very Horrifying!

Scientists and researchers have never stopped doing their job. Almost everyday, new species of creatures, believed to have lived millions and millions of years ago, are discovered. And with this new discovery, another family of sea monsters was introduced.

A new ancient fossil of a giant filter-feeding Cambrian shrimp-like creature have been discovered in Greenland.

According to study co-author Jakob Vinther (a paleobiologist at the University of Bristol in England), this kind of species labeled as Tamisiocaris borealis used huge and prickly appendages on its body to search the seas for tiny shrimplike food almost identical to krill.

 

  

The fossil of the new creature was found in sediments known as the Sirius Passet formation.

 

  

A team of researchers have been digging up at the site. They can only conduct the excavation during a six-week period of summer, when the weather is accommodating.

 

 

During an excavation trip in 2009, the team has also uncovered fragments of strange feeding appendages affixed to a head shield from an unknown creature. The appendages (dates to about 520 million years ago) has been said to have belonged to a group known as anomalocarids, the greatest predators of their day.

 

 

Tamisiocaris borealis is believed to have likely evolved these ancient sea monsters but with appendages different from other anomalocarids. Instead of large grasping claws, the front pieces were fine, soft bristles, which are much like the baleen found in the mouths of filter-feeding whales.

 

The description of T. borealis was reported on March 26 in the journal Nature.