In Yunnan Province, China, scientists have discovered a “strange object” resembling a tiny durian fruit, which is actually an ancient monster.
According to SciTech Daily, the newly discovered creature in Yunnan has been named Shishania aculeata, a Cambrian mollusk covered in spines resembling miniature durian spikes.
Shishania aculeata was found in a “fossil mine” in eastern Yunnan Province, perfectly preserved despite having died 514 million years ago.
Fossil of the new monster species in Yunnan – (Photo: SCIENCE).
According to Dr. Guangxu Zhang from Yunnan University (China), a co-author of the study, this frightening-looking creature is a new species belonging to the flatworm family.
Unlike most mollusks, this ancient creature lacked a shell covering its body, indicating that it represents a very early stage in the evolutionary process of mollusks.
Fossil records of mollusks are often extremely rare, as soft tissues rarely fossilize unless they are “frozen” in an extremely rapid and sudden event.
Dating back up to half a billion years and marking the most significant biological explosion in Earth’s history, this specimen is particularly valuable.
Reconstruction of the ancient creature – (Photo: SCIENCE).
“Trying to shed light on what the common ancestor of distinct animals like squids and oysters looked like is a significant challenge for evolutionary biologists and paleontologists,” said Associate Professor Luke Parry from the University of Oxford (UK), a co-author of the study.
Most studies must rely on speculative models derived from living mollusks, and that is never enough.
Thus, Shishania aculeata has provided them with a “time portal.”
Another unique aspect is that despite lacking a hard protective shell, this Cambrian monster possesses a body full of sharp chitinous spines, a material also found in the shells of crabs, insects, and some modern fungi.
Professor Parry noted they found extremely tiny details within the conical spines, including a sophisticated system of tubes that secreted material to thicken these spines during their lifetime.
“Such micro-information is extraordinarily rare, even in specially preserved fossils,” Professor Parry stated.
Hard spines and tough bristles are known in some modern mollusk species (like chitons), but they are made from calcium carbonate minerals rather than the organic chitin like this small monster.
All these peculiar characteristics suggest that mollusks may have a much more complex evolutionary history than we typically assume.
The study has been published in the scientific journal Science.
