This Three-Eyed Sea Moth From the Cambrian Looks Like a Kaiju and Breathes Through Its Butt

A newly described creature from the Cambrian period is putting a bizarre twist on what we thought we knew about early animal evolution. Meet Mosura fentoni—a three-eyed, clawed, and flappy-limbed predator about the size of your finger, recently identified from Canada’s famed Burgess Shale. The alien-looking animal is part of a group called radiodonts, a now-extinct lineage of arthropods best known for Anomalocaris, a three-foot-long (one-meter-long) sea terror with spiny limbs and a circular mouth full of teeth. Like its cousins, Mosura had a similar feeding disk and paddle-like limbs for swimming. But it also had a strange surprise out back: a tail-like segment of 16 tightly packed body sections, each lined with gills. The Royal Society Open Science published the team’s description of the creature today. “As much as we learn about radiodonts, there always seems to be something new and surprising about this group around the corner,” said study lead author Joe Moysiuk, curator at the ... Read full article.