One of the earliest apex predators, and perhaps the freakiest to ever haunt the sea, may have also been a delicate eater.
“These were the orcas … the great whites of the time,” says paleontologist Jakob Vinther of the University of Bristol in England, who was not involved in the study. A. canadensis was clearly adapted to be a top predator, he says, though it seems trilobites might have been too tough.
A. canadensis reigned roughly 500 million years ago. With a body as long as a housecat, it was among the largest creatures of the Cambrian period (SN: 2/19/15; SN: 4/24/19). Some researchers had suggested that it could have preyed upon another iconic Cambrian critter — the trilobite. Over the years, scads of fossilized injured trilobites have been unearthed, suggesting something had attacked them.
But paleobiologist Russell Bicknell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City had reservations. Trilobite exoskeletons were hard and thick, and no one had yet presented evidence that A. canadensis could break them.
2023-07-09 06:00:00
Source from www.sciencenews.org