#facivermis

[sombertide-0]

Dinovember day 5, Facivermis! I'm tired so I don't have facts, but it's a funky worm, enjoy it -w-

[facivermis]

every day i am in awe that facivermis is a real creature that existed. it looks like a fucking spongebob character. truly one of the best autism creatures of its time. one of the first animals to ever de-evolve in order to live in a tube and look stupid as fuck. i love you facivermis

[ormspryde]

Another extinct pixel critter, the lobopod facivermis. Wiggly!

[ID: A pixel art depiction of the extinct lobopod facivermis, rendered in two different shades of pink with the background in a gradient from light teal to dark teal. /ID]

[junoniadoesart]

Me, posting art on this account? *coughs* anyway, I have a few original settings swirling around in my head. One of them involves shapeshifting dragons/weredragons, with designs based on sea creatures and medieval bestiaries. Tiamat exists in the setting, depicted closer to her roots as a primordial sea goddess and the creator of said dragons, as well as a bunch of other things. It’s a little half-baked rn but I came up with a great design idea for her that I wanted to share… namely, to base her off of Paleozoic sea life!

This is what I’m thinking will be her preferred form. Primary insps include anomalocaris (armor and “wings”), dunkleosteus (placoderm “teeth”) trilobite (horns), some jawless fish whose name escapes me atm (tail), crinoid (“hair”), lamprey and tully monster (gills), and coelecanth (pectoral fins). Currently the one thing I’m undecided on is to keep it to just two eyes, or to give her five like an opabinia.

She is a shapeshifter, so she can change this up and frequently does! - In combat, she loses the “hair” and instead grows Wiwaxia-like spines. - When she needs to grab or handle something in a nonviolent context, she grows tendrils like that of a Facivermis - When she needs to grab or handle something in a violent context, she’ll go for anomalocaris grabby-things, or pincers and legs like a horseshoe crab or eurypterid - When she needs to go on land for whatever reason, she opts for horseshoe crab or eurypterid legs as well, I did a very, very rough sketch of this:

the scuttlerrrrrrr

[teehee]

cambrian days of the week

MAROCELLA monday

TULLY MONSTER tuesday

WIWAXIA wednesday

TRILOBITE thursday

FACIVERMIS friday

HALLUCINGENIA saturday

ANOMALOCARIS sunday

[teethands]

📌

hello, im rory, an aspiring paleoartist and avid worldbuilding/spec evo fan. i reblog mild nsfw jokes sometimes, view at your discretion.

tags: #rorys art

other blogs: @skirls (speculative biology project) @bonestrewncrest (elder scrolls), @hydrachop (minecraft), @facivermis (shitpost paleo), @identifying-prehistoric-beasts (gimmick)

🌵 carrd

🌵 vivosaur requests

🌵 shop (coming sometime soon)

[alphynix]

Cambrian Explosion #40: Phylum(?) Lobopodia – Then Somehow They Got Weirder

Most lobopodians looked fairly similar to each other, many resembling armored velvet worms, but some of these early panarthropods evolved much more diverse body plans and ecologies during the mid-Cambrian.

And compared to most of its slender relatives, Collinsovermis monstruosus was built like a tank. An absolute unit.

Originally discovered in 1983 in the Canadian Burgess Shale deposits (~508 million years ago), for several decades this species was known only by the nickname of "Collins' monster", after paleontologist Desmond Collins who published a single image of the fossil in 1986. It was finally formally described and named in 2020, and while our current understanding of lobopodians makes it seem a bit less bizarre than it did in the 80s, it's still one of the most unique-looking members of the group.

It was part of a lineage of lobopodians known as luolishaniids, which specialized several pairs of their front limbs into feathery appendages used for filter-feeding.

About 3.5cm long (1.5"), its large chunky body had 6 pairs of long spiny feeding appendages and 8 pairs of stout legs, each ending in a single massive hooked claw. Up to three long sharp spines adorned each body segment, and its head sported both a pair of antennae and a shield-like sclerite plate.

It probably used its hooked claws to climb up onto rocks and sponges, gathering plankton and organic particles from higher in the water column with its front limbs – and relying on its extensive spiky armor to deter larger predators while it was feeding in such exposed locations.

———

Another species called Facivermis yunnanicus was just as weird as the Collins' monster despite being almost the complete opposite in appearance.

Known from the Chinese Chengjiang fossil deposits (~518 million years ago), it was up to 9cm long (3.5") with five pairs of feathery front appendages and then… no other limbs at all. Instead it had a very long tubular body covered in tiny spines, and a pear-shaped bulbous rear end ringed with three rows of hooks.

It was discovered in the late 1980s and was originally thought to be a polychaete worm, with later studies eventually reinterpreting it as an unusual early panarthropod. It was suggested to be an ambush predator that anchored its rear end into the seafloor sediment and snatched up prey with its tentacle-like appendages, and was proposed as a transitional link between the limbless scalidophorans and the many-limbed lobopodians.

But then some new specimens described in 2020 revealed something unexpected.

Facivermis actually lived inside tubes buried in the sediment, and rather than being an early transitional form it was really a luolishaniid lobopodian – one that had descended from many-limbed ancestors and had highly specialized its body for an immobile mode of life, similar to modern tubeworms, reducing all of its other limbs to nothing in the process.

It's now one of the oldest known examples in the fossil record of a secondary loss of limbs.

It would have kept most of its body safely hidden inside its tube, anchored in with its spiny rear end, extending out its head and feathery limbs when it was feeding. Only 2 tubes are known out of 30 specimens, suggesting they were either made of a material that fossilized even more rarely than their occupants' soft bodies did, or that Facivermis was still somewhat mobile and also spent time outside of its tubes, possibly regularly abandoning them and constructing new ones.

———

Nix Illustration | Tumblr | Twitter | Patreon

[extinctworld-ua]

Facivermis

Facivermis — викопний рід лобопод, що існував у кембрійському періоді (520 млн років тому). Рештки тварини знайдені у маотяньшаньських сланцях в Китаї.

Повний текст на сайті "Вимерлий світ":

https://extinctworld.in.ua/facivermis/

[exitwound]

The bird eats worms. At least that one pure thing.

Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

[releasesoon]

This Worm That Lost Its Legs Is The Earliest Known Example of Evolutionary Reversion

This Worm That Lost Its Legs Is The Earliest Known Example of Evolutionary Reversion

Once upon a time, a small worm mucking about on the Cambrian seafloor did something really, really careless: it lost its legs.

As the old saying goes, “use it or lose it”. Since the worm – a squirmy creature belonging to the Facivermis genus – was not using its legs for locomotion, it evolved into a more primitive, legless animal.

  It’s not just a brilliant example of an animal evolving from…

[newscinema]

Humans and octopuses descended from the SAME animal that lived 518 million years ago

Humans and octopuses descended from the SAME animal that lived 518 million years ago

Octopuses and humans descended from the same primitive worm-like animal that lived 518 million years ago, and this could be why the eight-limbed creatures are highly intelligent. The creature, known as Facivermis yunnanicus, is the earliest known example of animals evolving to lose body parts it no longer needed and was minimally intelligent. A new study led by Max Delbruck Centre, Berlin found…

[facivermis]

i lvoe facivermis so much i love you little tube beast

[ormspryde]

Another Mayleozoic piece, this time of facivermis. (again) I didn't intend to paint this guy twice, but it happened, so here y'all go.

[ID: A pixel art depiction of facivermis, an extinct lobopod from the Cambrian Era. The creature resembles a worm with a bulb at one end, and several long filaments sprouting from its side at the other. /ID]

[pterribledinosaurdrawings]

ALRIGHTY!! I have made my first bunch of Cambrian patterns and my samples are here and they're up on Spoonflower, Redbubble, and MyFabricDesigns!

This one is called Cambrian Bowling Alley Carpet, and there's a smaller coordinating Cambrian Creature Confetti print. (I posted about this on my sewing and other drawings sideblog and will reblog it here later, but figured I'd add it to this post as well.)

The final lineup of large and medium sized motifs is: omnidens, anomalocaris, opabinia, norwoodia, marrella, facivermis, diania, pikaia, and hallucigenia. And the little confetti creatures are: orthoceras, burgessia, wiwaxia, isoxys, kiisortoqia, tuzoia, vetulicolia, dinomischus, urokodia, plectronoceras, nectocaris, eokinorhynchus, and various trilobites. Thank you to everyone who left suggestions!!

Of course they're not remotely to scale, but I did make Omnidens the biggest.

And I liked the Omnidens so much they got to be their own pattern, with some added texture. I did a blue and a brown version.

I will definitely do more Cambrian patterns, it's been delightful reading about these weird little aquatic friends and there's such a great variety of shapes! (I started sketching out another pattern, but it'll be a while before that happens. I didn't do much sewing in January because of all the drawing and editing, and I must have some drawing/sewing balance!)

The other patterns from this bunch of fill-a-yard samples are this crinoid fossil one copied from a 1760's teapot.

(More on that here and here.)

And these monster ones (more on them here).

Can anyone recommend some good Cambrian era life forms for me to go look at pictures of? I know the oceans were full of funky little dudes but I don't know much of anything about them.

(yes I am doing some googling also, but there are so so many, and perhaps some of you have some favourite Cambrian critters and want to talk about them?)

[theukone-news]

Древний червь утратил часть конечностей, чтобы поселиться в трубке

Ученые из Университета Эксетера, Университета провинции Юньнань и Музея естественной истории в Лондоне сумели установить происхождение червеобразного существа фацивермиса (Facivermis), жившего примерно 518 миллионов лет назад, в кембрийский период. Исследователи считают, что фацивермис представляет собой самый древний пример того, как в ходе эволюции животное теряет конечности, которые ему больше не ... Читать далее

[teethands]

hey i made it a few months ago but i do have a sideblog dedicated somewhat to general paleontology but mostly to cambrian biota and lobopods and memes. if you are curious

@facivermis