Hi there,
Here below, in three separate posts, I have typed up stories from one of our newspapers today. I hope you also find them interesting.
They are all verbatim from The Times (www timeslive co za)
SCIENTISTS FIND HAIRY MONSTER IN CHINA
More than half a billion years ago, a peculiar little creature with rows of spikes on its back, and delicate featherlike front limbs to strain bits of food from the water, thrived in the primordial seas of what is now China.
Scientists on Monday announced the discovery in the Yunnan Province of beautifully preserved fossils of one of the strangest animals ever to call earth home. The creature, Collinsium ciliosum, lived during the Cambrian period, a time of remarkable evolutionary experimentation when many unusual animals appeared and vanished. “Collinsium is definitely an odd-looking animal, and if one were to bump into one of these during a snorkelling or diving trip nowadays it would be quite shocking,†said University of Cambridge palaeo-biologist Javier Ortega-Hernandez, whose research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Its name means “hairy Collins monster, recognizing its bizarre appearance and the coat of hair-like structures on the front of the animal while honouring the Canadian palaeontologist Desmond Collins who decades ago conceptualized a similar creature.
Ortego-Hernandez said Collinsium which lived about 515-518 million years ago, is a distant ancestor of today’s velvet worms, a group resembling legged worms living in the world’s tropical forests.
(Reuters)
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I never knew worms with legs existed – but then I don’t live in a tropical forest either!
Cheers
Last edited by Lestie4containergardens; 07/01/15 08:28 AM.
