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NocturnalSea — Glowworm Nautilus Passengers
Published: 2011-05-26 20:00:35 +0000 UTC; Views: 6689; Favourites: 102; Downloads: 38
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Description
In addition to young V. lucifer (b), several other organisms frequently take up residence in the Glowworm Nautilus'[link] brood chamber. Copepods (A.), Ostracods (E.) and pelagic trilobites (D.) are abundant, as are planktonic crustacean larvae such as this crab zoea (C.). The identity of (F.) remained a mystery for quite some time. Clearly it was some sort of larvae, but we couldn't identify the adult form until Dr. Alonso successfully managed to raise a few to adulthood in his lab tanks. It turns out this spiny critter is actually the young of the anomalocarid Schinderhannes bartelsi.Related content
Comments: 12
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May I ask whether you are making this all up or that all this actually happened?
No offense for you, but the way that this was organized simply baffles me.
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Are there pelagic trilobites in the fossil record?
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Many, actually. Carolinites, Telephinus and Opipeuterella, for example. Their streamlined bodies and large eyes indicate a pelagic life, as do their global distributions in the fossil record (since bottom-dwelling trilboties wouldn't be able to migrate across the vast gulfs of the abyss to reach other shores). Sam Gon talks about it on his site:[link]
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Nice one on F ! At first I thought it was a little Hallucinigenia (or whatever it's called 
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I've often wondered what the larval forms of many prehistoric invertebrates would look like. The problem with trying to speculate is that larvae usually look nothig like the adult form.
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Could it be that distinct larval forms hadn't evolved by that point?
Or is that naive?
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If anything, I'd bet that the larval forms came first. I'd imagine that arthropods probably first differentiated as tiny planktonic creatures during the Precambrian (which would explain why we haven't found their fossils), and didn't actually gain hard, relatively large bodies until the Cambrian. That would explain the seeming "Cambrian Explosion" of diversity.
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Wow, that actually sounds pretty plausible! Is that a mainstream hypothesis or did you think of it yourself?
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I'm pretty sure I didn't come up with it. I feel like I read that somewhere, but I can't remember where. At least, I doubt I'm the first person to think of it.
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Oy, not remembering sources is a pain. I've never heard of that idea though, so it could be original.
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