Anomalocaris’s Compound Eye
Anomalocaris, an ancient three-foot-long shrimp-like creature, is an evolution anomaly. Anomalocaris (pictured left) is Greek for “anomaly shrimp.” The origin of this marine creature’s compound eye, a species first discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott in the Canadian Rockies at an elevation of over 7,000 feet above sea level, has long puzzled evolution scientists. Where did the freakish eyes originate, and how did it end up in the Canadian Rockies?
Top predators have exceptional vision, freakish or not. This week a team of scientists from Australia and Spain led by John R. Paterson (pictured right), a paleontologist at the University of New England, reported on a fossilized Anomalocaris’s compound eye found in the Emu Bay Shale, South Australia. The focus of the study was to explore the ancestral origins of Anomalocaris’s freakish eye.
