animal have evolved all sort of different ways to carry around their young , but scientists have never seen anything quite like this before .
This bizarre brute lived about 430 million class ago in what is now England . It goes by two name , the conventional Aquilonifer spinosus and the loose “ Kite Runner , ’ named in honor of the 2003 bestselling novel of the same name . The researchers who discovered the creature thought the name was minded given its unique brooding style , in which it carries around its youthful in lilliputian pod tethered to its trunk like kite . Thedetailsof this discovery can now be set up in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
Normally , crustaceans protect their eggs and embryos by attaching them to their limbs , or by envelop them with a limited pouch . But this exceptional pensiveness style is completely novel to scientists . As noted in a press assertion by Yale paleontologist and lead generator Derek Briggs , “ Nothing is known today that attach the young by screw thread to its upper surface . ”
Only one fossil exists of A. spinosus . The solitary grownup specimen measure less than a half - in long , and features an eyeless head cover by a cuticle - comparable structure . It lived on the seafloor during the Silurian period along with sea sponges , brachiopods , worms , snail , and mollusc . The dodo also bear 10 jejune arthropods at dissimilar stages of ontogenesis . Each of them were connected to the grownup by a individual thread .
The scientists reckon the possibility that the tiny creatures were actually sponger , but the unwieldy shape could n’t have been conducive for sucking up food . The only viable explanation for the tethered configuration was a novel form of brooding .
“ As the parent displace around , the juveniles would have looked like palm or kite attached to it , ” notice Briggs . “ It shows that arthropods evolved a variety of brooding strategies beyond those around today — perhaps this strategy was less successful and became extinct . ”
[ PNAS ]
ArthropodsBiologyPaleontologyScience
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