These formidable creatures hid under the seabed and grabbed their prey with sharp jaws, then dragged them underground and devoured them.
Fossils very, very distinctive
discovered in Taiwan unlike anything we’ve seen so far
, observes earth science professor Shahin Dashtgard of Simon Fraser University (SFU) in British Columbia.
They are described in a study that she publishes in the journal Scientific Reports.
Because worms have soft bodies, they are rarely fossilized, says Dashtgard. So the burrows they dig are really the only evidence we have of what their ecosystem would look like.
Researcher Yu Yen Pan illustrates how ancient giant worms grab their prey and then duck into the burrow to devour them.
Photo: Donated by researcher Yu Yen Pan
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Researchers believe the ancient worm was similar to the Bobbit worm, a marine predator that lives in the tropical and subtropical seas of the Indo-Pacific region and can grow up to 3 meters in length.
The Bobbit worm, known for its sharp teeth, was named in memory of Lorena Bobbitt, a woman who took revenge for her husband’s abuse by slicing his penis with a kitchen knife in 1993.
The fossil jaws of what is believed to be the oldest Bobbit worm were discovered in a 400-million-year-old rock formation in Ontario.
The Bobbit worm lived 400 million years ago. His fossil jaws were discovered by a team of researchers and are in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
Photo: Courtesy of James Ormiston
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Researchers named their new fossil Pennichnus beautiful!.
Pen means plucker
in latin and ichnus, footprint
. The beautiful pays homage to Formosa, the place where it was found in Taiwan.
The find is remarkable, according to the researchers, because it provides clues to the hunting behavior of an ancient invertebrate, which is quite rare.
Murray Gingras is a professor at the University of Alberta and studies the traces left by modern animals and compares them to the fossil record. He was not involved in the new study, but traveled to Australia to study the burrows of modern Bobbit worms as part of his own research.
He believes the study is well argued and credible. I think it’s a fun find.
With information from Emily Chung
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