Scientists Find Fossils of Ancient Phallus-Shaped Creature in Canada
Posted on March 14, 2013
Scientists from the University of Montreal's Department of Biological Sciences found the fossil of a strange, ancient phallus-shaped creature. The fossils were discovered in Canada's Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park. This area of shale beds is estimated to be 505 million years old.
The creature, Spartobranchus tenuis, is a member of the acorn worms group. An artist's interpretation of the newly discovered ancient acorn worm by Marianne Collins is pictured above and a photograph of the fossil is pictured below.
The scientists describe the worm as having a "a flexible body consisting of a short proboscis, collar and narrow elongate trunk terminating in a bulbous structure." The scientists say the bulbous structure may have served as an anchor for the worm. Dr. Chris Cameron of the University of Montreal is the leader of the study and author of the research paper. He notes in the announcement that finding a fossil of a warm-bodied creature is very rare.
Dr. Cameron says, "Unlike animals with hard parts including teeth, scales and bones, these worms were soft-bodied, so their fossil record is extremely rare. Our description of Spartobranchus tenuis, a creature previously unknown to science, pushes the fossil record of the enteropneusts back 200 million years to the Cambrian period, fundamentally changing our understanding of biodiversity from this period."
Dr. Cameron says a major different between modern acorn worms and Spartobranchus tenuis is that the ancient creature formed fibrous tubes. He says, "It's astonishing how similar Spartobranchus tenuis fossils are to modern day acorn worms, except that they also formed fibrous tubes. The explosive radiation of graptolites in the Paleozoic planktonic ecosystems is known only from the diversity of their tubes. Our findings suggest that the tubes were lost in the lineage leading to modern day enteropneusts, but elaborated on in graptolites and retained to the present day in pterobranchs
The research paper was published here in the journal Nature.
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