A pair of insect-like eyes, belonging to a bizarre prehistoric super-predator that roamed the seas over 500 million years ago, has been celebrated by Australian scientists.
The fossilized eyes, measuring three centimeters (1.2 inches) in diameter and possessing an incredible 16,000 individual lenses, were discovered in rocks on Kangaroo Island in Australia. These eyes belonged to a massive shellfish-like creature known as anomalocaris.
With the capacity to grow up to one meter long, anomalocaris was regarded as the “great white shark” of the Cambrian period, dominating the ancient marine food chain, as stated by lead researcher John Paterson.
In contrast, modern houseflies have approximately 3,000 lenses in their eyes, while dragonflies possess around 30,000 lenses—the only creatures known to exceed the lens count of anomalocaris.
Paterson noted that the findings indicate anomalocaris thrived in well-lit, clear waters and developed advanced vision at an astonishing pace, likely stimulating an evolutionary “arms race” among surrounding creatures.
It is presumed that spines, poison glands, and other defensive adaptations emerged among organisms vying to evade detection by its large eyes, which extended on stalks from either side of its head.
Paterson described the creature as “quite an alien-looking beast,” during his statement from Australia’s University of New England.
In addition to its protruding eyes, anomalocaris sported formidable claws lined with spines for capturing prey and possessed a “gnarly-looking circular mouth with teeth-like serrations inside.”
“The serrations were likely used for either shredding or chomping its prey, making it a rather fearsome creature,” Paterson remarked.
The discovery that anomalocaris had compound eyes further confirmed its status as an ancestor to contemporary arthropods, which include insects and shellfish, noted Paterson, whose research was published in Nature.
According to Paterson, when the specimen was originally buried in seafloor mud roughly 500 million years ago, Australia—then part of the Gondwana supercontinent—was situated in tropical waters near the equator.
The fossil was gradually pushed from the seafloor at a rate comparable to human fingernail growth, ultimately reaching Kangaroo Island—a current hotspot for Cambrian artifacts—off the coast of Adelaide in South Australia.
Paterson indicated that the site holds “a variety of fairly enigmatic” specimens that pose challenges for scientific classification, as they originate from an exceptionally early phase in animal evolution.
“The body structures of familiar animals were still undergoing development during the Cambrian,” he elaborated.
“Occasionally, they exhibit characteristics that are entirely alien to what one would find in modern organisms.”
While previous discoveries of anomalocaris specimens had occurred in Canada and China, Kangaroo Island turned out to be the first location where an intact eye was found, attributed to the unique shale rock in which it was encased, which was once “zero oxygen” mud.
Paterson explained, “Within the mud or sediment, there’s essentially no oxygen that permits microbes to begin breaking down soft tissues.”
“What we’ve observed in the Emu Bay shale at Kangaroo Island provides a much clearer representation of the life that existed there at that time than what is typically available in a standard fossil deposit.”
