An international team of palaeontologists has discovered the fossilized eyes belonging to an ancient giant shrimp-like marine creature.
Artist's impression of Anomalocaris (Katrina Kenny / University of Adelaide)
This metre-long predator Anomalocaris pursued its prey 515 million years ago through the waters of the Cambrian Period.
The discovery, published in the journal Nature, shows the structure of the Anomalocaris eye, which contained at least 16,000 hexagonal lenses arranged in a pattern of larger hexagons. “The number of lenses and other aspects of their optical design suggest that Anomalocaris would have seen its world with exceptional clarity while hunting in well-lit waters,” said Dr John Paterson, lead author on the paper from the University of New England.
“Anomalocaris is the stuff of nightmares and science fiction films,” said Dr Paterson. “It is considered to have been at the top of the earliest food chains because of its metre-long body, the formidable grasping claws at the front of its head, and its circular mouth with teeth-like serrations. And this new discovery confirms that it had superb vision to support its predatory lifestyle.”
“The eyes of Anomalocaris date back to an early phase of the Cambrian explosion, and as there is no evidence of eyes of any kind in the pre-Cambrian fossil record, they provide evidence that complex eyes appeared unusually rapidly in evolutionary terms. Among the arthropods, the visual acuity of Anomalocaris eyes is exceeded only in the dragonflies we share the world with today,” concluded Dr Paterson.
