Eyes on stalks: ancient predator a real monster A group of scientists working on fossils from Kangaroo Island in South Australia has turned up a Cambrian predator with horror-movie specs: razor serrations in a circular mouth, claws at the front of its head, and compound eyes on stalks. Taagged Anomalocaris (roughly “irregular shrimp”, or perhaps “abnormal shrimp”), the …
Well if $DEITY did design it he couldn’t have been 500 million years ago because some followers of $DEITY believe that the earth was created only 6,000 years ago over a six-day period.
Which explains why it is extinct, obviously 6,000 year old aussi’s hunted it to extinction, probably no doubt mounted on dinosaurs with saddles – see the Creation “Museum” near Petersburg, Kentucky
I'd love to know why GaboonViper67's post got so many downvotes
It wasn't "turned up" at Kangaroo Island, the first specimens were found in the Burgess Shales decades ago. It was sometime in the 1980s that someone worked out that what had been classified as pieces of four distinct animals were in fact the same thing. Sadly, the rules of scientific nomenclature required the complete thing to get the earliest name associated with any of the pieces-- which was an isolated weird-looking claw, thus "strange claw". It doesn't really do the thing justice.
And those are hardly even the most interesting eyes in the Cambrian. Check out Opabinia, which has 5, count 'em, FIVE eyes, all on stalks.
There's a great, very accessible description of the discovery and analysis of the Burgess Shale fossils in "Wonderful Life: Burgess Shale and the Nature of History " by Stephen Jay Gould. As well as Anomalocaris and Opabinia there are a host of other "alternative designs" which worked perfectly well in their environment, before changes led to a mass extinction.
Indeed, that's the very book that got me out of my dinosaur phase and hooked on much more interesting paleontology. It's aged pretty well, too-- IIRC, the only part that's seriously wrong now is the section on Hallucigenia, which, thanks to some better-preserved fossils found in China in the '90s, turns out to be relatively normal-looking (at least as Cambrian fauna goes).
Fireball doesn't work under water. SLOW would probably work but why bother it's probably got magic resistance anyway. So caste haste on the fighters and get to the back ASAP. Of course this ,very cool to know that we had such fucked up creatures in the past as an aside, is probably a high level adventure so we will have an Assassin, in which case invisibility, aiery water, haste and fly will do the trick.
You have a poor conception of what 'fittest' means. Don't feel bad, almost everyone has the same misconceptions.
There'd be no guarantee of better eyesight, but I'm pretty certain that grinding a 10000-facet corrective lens would cos a fair bit more than you might generally spend in an opticians...
the Peacock shrimp a strict descendant today? The Peacock mantiss is a fierce predator with the fastest movement in the world. It has a huge hammer which it releases to kill prey, the force of a .22 pistol it is said. There are several videos on Youtube with this little s*cker attacking prey with its hammer. Some of the Peacock mantisses have a spear instead of a hammer.
Talking about fierce predators, among the fiercest on earth today, is probably the honey badger. Now THAT is a nasty little s*cker that even lions avoid. It attacks everything. Watch on youtube and you will understand. The same little animal in the movie "The Gods must be crazy". Really really ferocious.
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