Over on the Laelaps blog on National Geographic, there's an interesting post about a new Anomalocaridids - "anomalous shrimp". The group was named originally by Joseph Frederick Whiteaves, because he only had the front appendages. Much later, the rest of the body of the large arthropod was described by Conway Morris and Harry B. Whittington. This new species, Aegirocrassis benmoulae, was discovered as part of the so called Fezouata Biota in Morocco. It lived about 485 to 443 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. The whole story is in this paper in the journal Nature.
Paleontologist Jakob Vinther pointed to a rust-colored boulder sitting on the black lab table. “What do you think that is?”, he asked. I hadn’t a clue. I was used to looking at bones – often really big saurian bones – and I couldn’t pick out any endoskeletal signs in the stone. It was mostly the fossil’s size that struck me. Whatever it was, the specimen was almost as big as me. I shrugged and opened my mouth to hazard a guess, hoping that some shot in the dark would get me close to the answer, but Vinther spoke before I did. “That”, he said, “is a giant anomalocaridid.”
