An ancient sea animal that looked like a flower had its anus
right next to its mouth, a new fossil study finds. The research
reveals that this odd marine creature was likely an ancestor of
a group known as the entoprocta. Previously, the oldest fossil
entoprocta came from the late Jurassic, about 145 million years
ago. The new fossils date all the way back to theCambrian, about
520 million years before the present. That is near the so-called
Cambrian Explosion, when most of the major lineages of animals
appeared on the scene, as did complex ecosystems. Some odd
animals emerged during this time, such as bizarre shrimplike
monsters called anomalocaridids that could grow up to about 6
feet (1.8 meters) in length; a 515-million-year-old predator
with compound eyes containing 3,000 lenses; and a 50-legged
arthropod that skittered along the seafloor of what is now
Canada. The newfound species, Cotyledion tylodes, has been
analyzed before, but the discovery of hundreds of new specimens
allowed researchers led by Zhi