Matt Groening and The Simpsons chased a third predator who acquired the Cambrian seas more than half a billion years ago after introducing Blinky, an extra-eyed mutant fish swimming through Springfield's old fisheries. Once you catch a quarry, the mouth of a circle covered in teeth will finish the job.
The creature, known as Mothra Fentoni, is a fitting addition to the strange flesh preserved in Burgess Shale, a considerable fossil deposit in the Canadian Rockies. However, the anatomy of animals, described in the Royal Society's Open Science magazine on Wednesday, reveals that Mothra may not be as heterogeneous as it looks.
The first Mothra specimens were excavated more than a century ago by paleontologist Charles Walcott, who discovered Burgess Shale in 1909. In recent decades, paleontologists at the Ontario Museum in Toronto have discovered “lase sea beds a show shing of that shing of the in show shing of the bush of the bush of that shing of mosura fossils.”
They were not fish, but it was clear that the muss of the sea had a connection with Radiodont, the group of ancestral arthropods who ruled the Cambrian food chain. However, careful examination of the animals does not occur until 2012 when masses of Mothra specimens are excavated at Marble Canyon, an outcrop of Burgess Shale.
“A collection of both old and new specimens kicked us into gear and finally understood this animal,” said Joseph Moischk, a paleontologist who studied marble canyon fossils as a doctoral student.
Dr. Moiszk worked with advisors at the Royal Ontario Museum of Jan Bernard Carron to examine approximately 60 ocean specimens. Like other Burgess Shale creatures, many Mothra specimens are well preserved and retain characteristics such as the gastrointestinal tract and circulatory system. Some even had traces of nerve bundles in each of the three eyes of the creature.
The team captured the detailed anatomy of the flat fossils by photographing Mothra specimens under polarized light.
A critical feature of living arthropods is the division of their bodies into special parts. For example, crustaceans such as crabs have different appendages adapted to perform certain functions such as feeding and walking. Fossils of the ancestors of many early arthropods, including other radiozones, reveal relatively simple body plans. Therefore, researchers have long proposed that segmentation took a long time to evolve.
Mothra backs this trend. Despite being only 2.5 inches long, the creature's body was split into up to 26 segments.
“This is something we've never seen in this group before,” said Dr. Moisiuk, who is currently at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg.
In addition to its wide swimming flap, the animal possessed a highly segmented trunk behind its body. Researchers say the area resembles abdominal-like structures used by crabs, wood squirrels and several insects to breathe.
Optimizing oxygen intake was essential for active predators like Mothra. Researchers assume that the animal chased a small prey through open water. They would have also had to separate themselves from their massive contemporaries, such as the 2-foot-long, unusual anomalies and spacecraft-shaped titanocory.
As no other Radiodont owned such a specialized trunk, researchers placed Mosura within their own group. And instead of naming the animal after that three-eyed cartoon fish, the team drew inspiration from another pop culture reference, Godzilla's winged nemesis, Mothra. According to Dr. Moysiuk, the name nods both to the creature's nickname and the enduring popularity of Japanese Burgess Cher creatures.
The team observed other notable features at Mothra, such as dark, reflex patches and swimming flaps within the creature's body. Researchers assume that these represent unae: the lumen that holds the animal's blood after draining the animal's blood from the swelling heart.
However, not all researchers are convinced that these marks represent fossilized blood pouches. As a paleontologist at Harvard University, Joanna Wolf was not involved in the new paper, she could represent other features, such as the gut.
While some of Mothra's characteristics may correspond to scientific debates, Dr. Caron believes that the body segments of this ancient sea creature reveal connections to living arthropods. “It's certainly a very strange animal,” he said.
