New Fossil Animal-Shaped Tulips

Although the similar shape of the tulip, the newly discovered ancient organisms in Canada this is the fossil of an animal. Strange fossils 500 million years old has a different digestive system with most animals.

The tulip-shaped sea creature "Siphusauctum gregarium". (Picture from: http://news.sciencemag.org)

Animals that are named Siphusauctum gregarium was found in older rock layers called the Burgess Shale. Formerly, this layer is an ancient seabed. Viewed from its size, this animal is nearly equal in length with a kitchen knife, which is about 20 centimeters. In general, these creatures are composed of rods with a bubble at the edges, like a tulip flower. The researchers estimate these animals live attached in ancient ocean sediments, and form colonies. A PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto, Lorna O'Brien, said that this strange animal collects food by sucking and filtering organisms that float on the ocean floor. This technique is similar to the mechanism of collecting dust on a vacuum cleaner. "This fact makes it difficult to enter Siphusauctum researchers in other groups of organisms," she said.

O'Brien and her supervisor Jean-Bernard Caron, curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, report on the discovery today in the online science journal PLoS ONE.

The fossils were found O'Brien found a group of 65 individuals. It is conceivable that, in his lifetime, the colony looks like a flower garden on the sea floor. Until now 1.100 fossil specimens have been collected and is referred to as the "tulip bed". *** [MSNBC | NEATORAMA | ANTON WILLAM | KORAN TEMPO 3773]