Strange 518-Million-Year-Old 'Mythical Beast' Sea Creature Fossil Discovered

An artistic rendition shows the rare creature had a long worm-like body, a shell over its head like a bike helmet and lengthy scary spikes poking out from either side of its body.

Experts find rare ancient fossilized sea creature that's 'strange beyond measure'

• The second one of its kind ever found
• 518 million years old from Cambrian Period
• Likely lived in shallow waters less than 100 meters deep
   

This bizarre prehistoric sea creature looks like an armored spikey caterpillar from outer space! It was found by archaeologists at southern China's famous fossil site of Yunnan Province where a treasure trove of ancient history lies hidden beneath the earth dating back to the Cambrian Period 541 to 485.4 million years ago. 

Its official name is orthrozanclus elongata, after its long body and despite the tens of thousands of fossils in the area, only 2 of these have ever been found so far. 

1. The first one was dug up in 2015 in Chengjiang fossil site by Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology's researchers. 
2. The second was discovered in 2016 in Kunming by a fossil lover who gave it to Mr. Zhao, who learned it was the same as species. 

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Zhao Fangchen holds one of the two fossils of the ancient species that have been discovered in Yunnan Province, China.

“The two specimens could shed light on the diversity of extinct creatures as well as their connection with animals in modern times.”

— Zhao Fangchen, researcher

Zhao Fangchen knew as soon as he saw the fossil it was different from others 'even if it was very small' because of its extremely long spikes and unsegmented body. These made it difficult to categorize.

"The creature was about 1.5cm long and 3mm wide, but its spikes were about 6mm long. It just looked so different," said Mr. Zhao.

Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology. Shell-armoured creatures, sclerite-covered taxa, discovered in Chengjiang, Yunnan fossil site. A, b, f, and g are the two new specimens.

Ancient Mythical Beasts

With an armored body and long spikes all around Dr. Smith said "the creature is like a mythical beast." He added that "we don't know much about the animal underneath these mineralized plates - whether it had legs or a slug-like foot, whether it had teeth or tentacles." 

Mr. Zhao Fangchen believes this strange appearance is more than just some ornate decoration to attract mates but that it evolved to protect itself from enemies. The armor is a strong defense and the spikes are even better, acting as feelers through the water as well as an offensive defense to keep predators at a distance. 

Mr. Zhao and other researchers think these fossils backup the Cambrian Explosion theory that claims a huge variety of creatures emerged about 541 million years ago due to a dramatic increase in oxygen. Before that time, there were mostly simple organisms that didn't change much for a long time. This diversification explosion ended during an extinction even about 488 million years ago. 

A tiny but significant discovery.

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Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5132611/518-million-year-old-creature-strange-measure.html

https://www.livescience.com/61021-bizarre-cambrian-worm-discovered.html

Giant Dolphin-Like Dinosaur Fossil Found in India

The Ichthyosaur is nicknamed "Fish Lizard" is an ancient marine reptilian dinosaur 15 feet long resembling dolphins and whales that survived alongside other epic sea predators like ancient sharks and plesiosaurs. They lived between 90 and 250 million years ago when supercontinent Pangaea broke into Laurasia and Gondwana. 

Fossils of the Jurassic-era Ichthyosaur have already been found all over the world with, so what makes this one found in India so special? This is the only almost-complete skeleton ever discovered from this part of the world. Previous ones were only parts of the spine and teeth, providing little clues to these creatures here. 

"Vertebrate fossils are rare from the Kachchh region, and we were expecting only bone fragments from this area. So, to find a near-complete skeleton is surprising as well as exciting," said study lead author Guntupalli Prasad in an interview. 

This also strengthens theories of a sea route connecting India and South America where these creatures could travel through. 

What Did the Iichthyosaur Eat?

The teeth showed wear marks from biting hard rough things and since mollusk fossils were found next to it, archaeologists believe they ate mollusks as well as ancient fish and other smaller reptiles. 

New Fossil Discovery in Morocco Will rewrite Human History

Well, time to change the text books…

Until now, researchers believed that the first ever modern humans or Homo sapiens, came out of East Africa about 200,000 years ago. But in Jebel Irhoud a remote region of Morocco in what was once a cave. A team of European and Moroccan scientists has found five fossil remains that dates back to about 315,000 years ago, which would make them the oldest modern humans ever found.

This is a huge breakthrough because it would mean our species evolved across africa more than 100,000 years earlier.

Shannon McPherron/Nature

According to a report in the Journal Nature, The international team of researchers led by Jean-Jacques Hublin who directs the department of human evolution at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology uncovered a skull, bones along with some stone tools.

In a statement Hublin said: "This material represents the very root of our species, the oldest Homo sapiens ever found in Africa or elsewhere,"

“We used to think that there was a cradle of mankind 200, 000 years ago in east Africa, but our new data reveal that Homo sapiens spread across the entire African continent around 300,000 years ago,” he explains

He added “Until now, the common wisdom was that our species emerged probably rather quickly somewhere in a ‘Garden of Eden’ that was located most likely in sub-Saharan Africa,”

“Long before the out-of-Africa dispersal of Homo sapiens, there was dispersal within Africa,” says Hublin.

The fossils found were surrounded by gazelle and other animal bones and scientists believe that these homo sapiens mainly hunted for their food. The fossil also shows that although our ancestors brains functioned differently they did have similar faces as our own.

The discovery of the site was not new, a few pieces of skull and flint blades were found by moroccan miners at the Jebel Irhoud site in 1961, but the horrendous dating techniques used back then estimated the remains to be only 40,000 years old. It wasn't until the 1980s when Jean-Jacques Hublin took a closer look at one jawbone that he realized something didn’t add up.

Hublin said although the teeth was similar to modern humans, the shape seemed very primitive. Thus starting in 2004 Dr. Hublin and his team started to excavate Jebel Irhoud once again and found more fossils, including five skull bones and burnt flint blades. Scientists used  a method called thermoluminescence to estimate how long it has been since the blades were burned and estimated the blades to be around 300,000 years old.

Of course a claim so big could not be without its detractors.

John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin said that it was a plausible idea, but that recent discoveries of fossils from the same era raise the possibility that they were used by other hominins. The only way to resolve the question will be to find more hominin fossils from the time when our species emerged.