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Giun cát giống 'Dune' cổ đại tồn tại lâu hơn tưởng tượng
28 Mar, 2024
nhà nghiên cứu kiểm tra hóa thạch của loài giun săn mồi và tìm thấy loài mới tồn tại 25 triệu năm sau khi được cho là tuyệt chủng
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With a head covered in rows of curved spines, ancient Selkirkia worms could easily be confused with the razor-toothed sandworms that inhabit the deserts of Arrakis in “Dune: Part Two.”
During the Cambrian Explosion more than 500 million years ago, these weird worms — which lived inside long, cone-shaped tubes — were some of the most common predators on the seafloor.
Thankfully for would-be spice harvesters, these ravenous worms (sâu săn mồi) disappeared hundreds of million years ago. But a trove of recently analyzed fossils from Morocco reveals that these formidable predators measuring only an inch or two in length, persisted much longer than previously thought.
Dr. Nanglu posits that forming such a tube was a strong defense during the Cambrian, when fewer large predators were prowling open water (rình mò vùng nước mở). But as free-swimming predators proliferated during the Ordovician, the rigid tubes may have eventually made these worms more susceptible targets. As a result, these worms may have ditched their tubes and adopted more active modes of escape (áp dụng các phương thức trốn thoát tích cực hơn), like burrowing.
While the ecological costs of producing (chi phí sinh thái của việc sản xuất) these tubes probably caught up to Selkirkia worms in the long run, the new finding proves that the worms successfully stuck around longer than many of the Cambrian’s bizarre wonders. To Dr. Nanglu, their presence also suggests that sometimes reality really is stranger than fiction, even when it comes to big screen look-alikes.
source: nytimes,
Tags: Hồng Nhungscience
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