Weird wonders lived past the Cambrian

• A recent archaeological dig in Morocco has revealed a set of rare, soft-bodied organisms that almost never leave fossils, dating to the Early Ordovican Period, where previously they were thought only to exist in the Cambrian Period.
• The first trace of fossils like this was found at the Burgess Shale in Canada, but it was not nearly as large as this "treasure trove" of fossils containing creatures such as "halkieriids, which look like slugs wearing chain mail; Hallucigenia, which resemble long-legged centipedes with sea-urchin spines; and Opabina, which have five eyes and a long nose with a claw on the end."
• These surprising discoveries, occurring in what would have been open ocean during the Ordovican, have also revealed that horseshoe crabs have been around much longer than expected, actually first appearing around 30 million years ago.
• Morocco is a bit like a fossil capitol of the world due to the staggering amount of fossilized remains picked up there, often picked up and sold by ordinary farmers, and even the recently discovered fossils were unearthed by a small scale, local fossil collector named Mohammed Ben Said Ben Moula.

Reflection:
An article like this makes me think all the way back to the beginning of the year, when an in class video showed how different layers of the earth can reveal so much about evolutionary history. This at least gave me the background to understand how all of this took place. As far as the actual discovery, although not as ground-breaking as some of the others listed on this blog, it is nonetheless just as important, as it is, like I said in an earlier article, "another piece of the puzzle."

Source:
Jones, Nicola. "Weird Wonders Lived past the Cambrian: Scientific American." Science News, Articles and Information | Scientific American. 12 May 2010. Web. 21 May 2010. .