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Researches from the University of Toronto found a fossil of an animal called “Yawunik kootenayi” near Marble Canyon site, which is part of the Canadian Burges Shale fossil deposit.
This fossil of the lobster is said to be at the top of the food chain. It played an important role in the ancient ecosystem.
The study is published in Palaeontology.
This lobster lived 250 million years before the dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
The fossils revealed that the creature is 10 centimeters long with two pair of eyes and had huge grasping appendages.
It has evolved the frontal appendages consisting of three long claws.
The appendages on the claws are used to sense its surroundings.
Two of the claws had teeth which helped to catch its prey.
Yawunik was an arthropod. Some of the examples of arthropod are lobsters and butterflies.
Cedric Aria, a PhD candidate in University of Toronto’s Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology said, “It has the signature features of an arthropod with its external skeleton, segmented body and jointed appendages, but lacks certain advanced traits present in groups that survived until the present day. We say that it belongs to the ‘stem’ of arthropods.”
He added, “This creature is expanding our perspective on the anatomy and predatory habits of the first arthropods, the group to which spiders and lobsters belong”.
Yawnik was capable of moving its frontal appendages forward and backward, spreading them out during an attack and pulling it back under its body while swimming.
