Bizarre-looking, spiky Cambrian creature found in Yunnan fossils

More than half a billion years ago, a peculiar little creature with rows of spikes on its back and delicate, feather-like 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 Yunnan province of beautifully preserved fossils of one of the stranger 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 paleobiologist Javier Ortega-Hernández, whose research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Despite its startling appearance, some people "may like it and regard it as a handsome beast", added paleontologist Zhang Xiguang of Yunnan University in Kunming.

Its name means "hairy Collins monster", recognising its bizarre appearance and the coat of hair-like structures on the front of the animal while honouring Canadian paleontologist Desmond Collins, who decades ago conceptualised a similar creature.

Ortega-Hernández said Collinsium, which lived about 515-518 million years ago, is a distant ancestor of velvet worms, a group resembling legged worms residing in tropical forests.