Researchers from the University of Leicester and the Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeobiology employed advanced scanning technology to recreate a ‘fossil monster’ that lived half a billion years ago., Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeobiology, Yunnan University’s Institute of Palaeontology, the Chengjiang Fossil Museum, and London’s Natural History Museum have re-examined a unique fossil animal found in nearly 520-million-year-old rocks.
Fossils of many kinds of marine animals first appeared in rocks from about half a billion years ago and signal a time when complex ecosystems were developing in the world’s oceans. One of the key localities for such fossils is the area around the town of Chengjiang in southern China, where the fossils in this study were collected by the Chinese team.
Lead author of the study Robert O’Flynn, a Ph.D. student at the University of Leicester School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, said: “The preservation of the fossil animal is amazing. After CT-scanning we can digitally turn it around and literally stare into the face of something that was alive over 500 million years ago. As we spun the animal around, we could see that its head possesses six segments, just as in many living arthropods.