Massive new animal species discovered in half-billion-year-old Burgess
Shale
ROM palaeontologists unearth one of the largest radiodonts of the
Cambrian explosion

Date:
September 8, 2021
Source:
Royal Ontario Museum
Summary:
Palaeontologists have uncovered the remains of a huge new fossil
species, an estimated length of half a meter, belonging to an
extinct animal group, in the half-a-billion-year-old Cambrian
rocks from Kootenay National Park in Canada.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Palaeontologists at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) have uncovered the
remains of a huge new fossil species belonging to an extinct animal group
in half-a- billion-year-old Cambrian rocks from Kootenay National Park
in the Canadian Rockies. The findings were announced on September 8,
2021, in a study published in Royal Society Open Science.


========================================================================== Named Titanokorys gainesi, this new species is remarkable for its
size. With an estimated total length of half a meter, Titanokorys was
a giant compared to most animals that lived in the seas at that time,
most of which barely reached the size of a pinky finger.

"The sheer size of this animal is absolutely mind-boggling, this
is one of the biggest animals from the Cambrian period ever found,"
says Jean-Bernard Caron, ROM's Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology.

Evolutionarily speaking, Titanokorys belongs to a group of primitive
arthropods called radiodonts. The most iconic representative of this
group is the streamlined predator Anomalocaris, which may itself have approached a metre in length. Like all radiodonts, Titanokorys had
multifaceted eyes, a pineapple slice-shaped, tooth-lined mouth, a pair
of spiny claws below its head to capture prey and a body with a series
of flaps for swimming. Within this group, some species also possessed
large, conspicuous head carapaces, with Titanokorys being one of the
largest ever known.

"Titanokorys is part of a subgroup of radiodonts, called hurdiids, characterized by an incredibly long head covered by a three-part carapace
that took on myriad shapes. The head is so long relative to the body
that these animals are really little more than swimming heads," added
Joe Moysiuk, co- author of the study, and a ROM-based Ph.D. student in
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto.

Why some radiodonts evolved such a bewildering array of head carapace
shapes and sizes is still poorly understood and was likely driven
by a variety of factors, but the broad flattened carapace form in Titanokoryssuggests this species was adapted to life near the seafloor.

"These enigmatic animals certainly had a big impact on Cambrian seafloor ecosystems. Their limbs at the front looked like multiple stacked rakes
and would have been very efficient at bringing anything they captured in
their tiny spines towards the mouth. The huge dorsal carapace might have functioned like a plough," added Dr. Caron, who is also an Associate
Professor in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto, and Moysiuk's Ph.D. advisor.

All fossils in this study were collected around Marble Canyon in northern Kootenay National Park by successive ROM expeditions. Discovered less
than a decade ago, this area has yielded a great variety of Burgess Shale animals dating back to the Cambrian period, including a smaller, more
abundant relative of Titanokorys named Cambroraster falcatusin reference
to its Millennium Falcon-shaped head carapace. According to the authors,
the two species might have competed for similar bottom-dwelling prey.

The Burgess Shale fossil sites are located within Yoho and Kootenay
National Parks and are managed by Parks Canada. Parks Canada is proud
to work with leading scientific researchers to expand knowledge and understanding of this key period of earth history and to share these
sites with the world through award-winning guided hikes. The Burgess
Shale was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 due to its outstanding universal value and is now part of the larger Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.

The discovery of Titanokorys gainesiwas profiled in the CBC's The Nature
of Thingsepisode "First Animals." These and other Burgess Shale specimens
will be showcased in a new gallery at ROM, the Willner Madge Gallery,
Dawn of Life, opening in December 2021.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Royal_Ontario_Museum. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. J.-B. Caron, J. Moysiuk. A giant nektobenthic radiodont from
the Burgess
Shale and the significance of hurdiid carapace diversity. Royal
Society Open Science, 2021; 8 (9): 210664 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.210664 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210908062548.htm

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