Fossils of distant, sea-dwelling ancestor of spiders and crabs unearthed in Canada

The Cambroraster falcatus is a primordial sea creature with rake-like claws and a head resembling a Star Wars spacecraft

It lived during the Cambrian Period 506 million years ago, when all animal life lived in the oceans

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The Cambroraster falcatus lived 506 million years ago. Photo: Reuters

Published: 1:30am, 1 Aug 2019Updated: 2:02am, 1 Aug 2019

Hundreds of fossils of a primordial sea creature with rake-like claws and a head resembling a famous fictional spaceship have been unearthed in Canada, providing a wealth of information about an important predator from a key time in the evolution of life on Earth.

Scientists said on Tuesday that the creature, called Cambroraster falcatus, was a distant relative of today’s arthropods – the diverse group of animals including insects, spiders and crabs – and lived during the Cambrian Period 506 million years ago, when all animal life lived in the oceans.

A complete fossil unearthed in Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Photo: Reuters

“Most animals in the Cambrian Period were small, typically a few centimetres long at most. By comparison, Cambroraster was a giant, at up to a foot long (30cm),” said palaeontologist Joe Moysiuk of the Royal Ontario Museum and University of Toronto, lead author of the research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Cambroraster was excavated in Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies from a rock formation known as the Burgess Shale that has yielded fossils of a wondrous array of Cambrian species.

The Cambrian was a time of evolutionary experimentation when nearly all major animal groups first appeared and numerous oddballs came and went.

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