Nightmare crab with cartoon eyes: scientists discover bizarre crustacean from the time of the dinosaurs

Scientists have discovered a new species of crab that swam the sea 95 million years ago.

The small, pocket-sized crab, named Callichimaera perplexa, was very different from its modern-day cousins. This crab sported a tiny lobster-esque shell, legs flattened like oars and huge peepers that protruded from its head, which, researchers said, show that the creature used its eyes actively for whatever it did for a living.

But it is not only the critter’s cartoon appearance that has some researchers tickled, it is also what the ancient animal means to science. Javier Luque, a postdoctoral palaeontologist at both Yale University and the University of Alberta, said the “cute” and “unusual” decapod crustacean is going to make scientists “rethink what a crab is”.

“It gives us information about how novel body forms can evolve over time,” Luque said in an interview on Thursday.

Luque said he made the discovery in 2005 in the mountains in Pesca, Boyaca, in Colombia. Luque, who was an undergraduate geology student at the time, said he was hunting for fossils when he uncovered a trove of specimens from crustaceans – shrimp, lobsters and crabs with big, bulbous eyes.