Ancient Penis-Headed Worm Pushes Fossil Record Back 200 Million Years

Behold Spartobranchus tenuis , a newly detect brute that ’s proving to be a crucial evolutionary lacking connection . The determination shows that biodiversity over half a billion age ago was more complex — and creepier — than antecedently thought .

The phallus - shaped fossil was unearth in Canada ’s 505 million year - old Burgess Shale , and it ’s a find that ’s resetting the ancestry of these enteropneusts back to the Cambrian period .

S. tenuis is a appendage of the acorn worms group — bantam and elusive creatures that lark in fine sands and mucky waters . They ’re part of the hemichordates , a group of nautical animals closely related to today ’s sea stars and ocean urchin .

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Hemichordates were first chance upon in the nineteenth C , but there ’s been confusion about their inception and the human relationship between its two main arm , enteropneusts and pterobranchs .

S. tenuis now solve this mystery by connect the two main hemichordate groups . Moreover , the fossil indicates that primitive enteropneusts developed a tube-shaped structure , a characteristic that ’s still featured by modern pterobranchs .

Above image : Two individual of Harrimania planktophilus , a innovative enteropneust ( harrimaniid ) worm . exposure : C.B. Cameron , Université de Montréal .

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The tiny worm , which were found inside ossified tubes , featured elastic bodies and were potential filter feeders ( like other enteropneusts ) . The thermionic valve were probably used as dwelling structures .

The worm feed on small particles of matter trickle from seawater . The largest specimen was almost four inch long ( 10 curium ) . And fascinatingly , S. tenuis may have played an important role in proceed carbon from the water chromatography column to the sediment in the early Burgess Shale environment .

image : C.B. Cameron , University of Montreal .

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