#Cambrian explosion

[amybugz]

take me back to the cambrian explosion

(featuring made-up cambrian beasts from this months drink and draw :3)

[dmdog]

Little zine project for a fake park

[ravewing]

did anomalocaris really say this

[lovertm]

Cambrian explosion inspired nailed by piopionails

[hallucigenia-appreciation]

i went crazy trying to find your hallucigenia is with you post awhile back so i made this to cope

Oh my god this is litteraly beautiful, a work of art.

[cambriandude]

Everyone's favorite five eyed freak of the cambrian, Opabinia regalis. An animal that's weird even when compared to it's closer relatives.

[shirecorn]

Today's..... Mermaid

It's my goal right now to create a new mermaid design every day Mermay. I thought opening up requests would be a great way to learn about new and awesome fish! Then people asked if maybe I can do other sea creatures that aren't strictly fish?

Sure! I've done selkies and cetaceans, what if somebody wants an octopus? So I can handle that! I said any aquatic animal is fair game.

I have since been challenged with an array of strange and haunting creatures that technically count as aquatic!!! And I said I'd do them so, after the frog, a cherished supporter gave me a new task.

hallucigenia

Yeah I didn't know what that was either. It's a funky noodley spiky creature from the cambrian era and TECHNICALLY IT'S AN AQUATIC CREATURE SO OK. Hallucigenia is called that due to the absolute silliness that went into its discovery and reconstruction. Scientists originally put it together upsidedown and backward, not knowing which part was for walking or waving around. So of course she proved a ridiculous challenge to adapt to mermay.

Ready to meet my cambrian nightmare?

yeah. She's happy to meet you too.

[katborg82]

I was born in the wrong generation

[fer7adami]

The cambrian period

With the lil dudes that inhabit Earth this time

[mabelcreature]

THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION!!! i love these guys

[alphynix]

The tuzoiids were an enigmatic group of Cambrian invertebrates known mostly just from their spiny bivalved carapaces. Although hundreds of fossils of these arthropods were discovered over the last century or so, only vague fragments of the rest of their bodies have been found even in sites usually known for preserving soft tissue impressions.

…Until late 2022, when several new specimens from the Canadian Burgess Shale deposits (~508 million years ago) were described showing tuzoiid anatomy in exceptional detail, finally giving us an idea of what they looked like and where they fit into the early arthropod evolutionary tree.

Tuzoiids like Tuzoia burgessensis here would have grown up to about 23cm long (~9"). They had large eyes on short stalks, a pair of simple antennae, a horizontal fluke-like tail fan, and twelve pairs of appendages along their body – with the front two pairs at the head end being significantly spinier, and most (or all) of these limbs also bearing paddle-like exopods.

The large carapace enclosed most of the body, and was ornamented with protective spines and a net-like surface pattern that probably increased the strength of the relatively thin chitinous structure.

Together all these anatomical features now indicate that tuzoiids were early mandibulates (part of the lineage including modern myriapods, crustaceans, and insects), and were probably very closely related to the hymenocarines.

Tuzoiids seem to have been active swimmers that probably cruised around just above the seafloor, with their stout legs suggesting they could also walk around if they flexed their valves open. The arrangement of their spiny front limbs wasn't suited to grabbing at fast-swimming prey, but instead may have been used to capture slower seafloor animals or to scavenge from carcasses.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Twitter | Patreon

[linseedling]

Kickin' it in the Cambrian

[bobnichollsart]

A few draft drawings showing how I built "Cambrian Epic" for Park et al, for their paper describing Timoresestia.

[ravewing]

*ancient seafloor rumbling*

YOU'RE LISTENING TO

*scuttling of trilobites*

107.9

*crunching of exoskeleton*

REAL ANOMALOCARIS FM

*undulating of imbricating lateral lobes*

WHERE WE ROCK THE PRIMORDIAL DEPTHS!

*bubbling underwater sounds*

NO MODERN TUNES HERE, JUST PALEOZOIC ROCK!

*ocean waves crashing*

*clicking of appendages*

THIS AIN'T YOUR SOFT-BODIED ORGANISM'S STATION

*Imagine Dragons - Radioactive starts playing*

[kaithewhatever]

Serfs react to Opabinia

[izapug]

~CAMBRIAN LIL DUDES~