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Speaker 1: Hello, Dr Jessup. Anybody here? Well, hello, good sir. I'm

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Speaker 1: glad to see you have arrived. I apologize I can't

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Speaker 1: be there to greet you in person, but please know

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Speaker 1: that I have most appreciative of your attendance. It's so

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Speaker 1: hard to find good volunteers these days. It's it's just

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Speaker 1: just every undergraduate with even a bit of backbone and

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Speaker 1: simply vanished in the past six months. Uh huh okay,

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Speaker 1: So am I in the right place? Ah? Well, well,

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Speaker 1: perhaps instead you should ask whether you were in the

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Speaker 1: right time? Uh huh. Well, the flyer said you were

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Speaker 1: doing six for test subjects in something called Middle Cambrian exposure.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that is, but if you're paying cash,

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Speaker 1: I'm still on board. Excellent. Now tell me do you

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Speaker 1: have any experience with time displacement? I don't think so,

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Speaker 1: of course, not, of course not. You can tell me.

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Speaker 1: Can you swim? You know I can, but it's one

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Speaker 1: of those things I wouldn't say I'm a great swimmer. Okay,

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Speaker 1: nobody's perfect. Do you see the throbbing lightness of the

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Speaker 1: world text in the center of the room there, Well, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I do, except go to it right, Yes, yes, closer,

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Speaker 1: closer doesn't feel right? What's that feeling? What's the matter,

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Speaker 1: my little vertebrate? Haven't you ever wanted to feel? Five

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Speaker 1: hundred miran years loved? What is that? Is? That? Is

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Speaker 1: that an ocean? Oh? My god, It's like the whole

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Speaker 1: planet's an ocean. It's full of monsters. Welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to blow your Mind from housework dot com. Hey, welcome

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Speaker 1: to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. That was obviously

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Speaker 1: a reference to some kind of journey we may be

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Speaker 1: taking to the Cambrian period. That's right. Yeah, we had

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Speaker 1: a little cameo by the late great Anton Jess late

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Speaker 1: did he die? I don't know. I mean there are

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Speaker 1: there are rumors of his death, but who knows for sure?

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Speaker 1: They always exaggerated. Is well? Anyway, today I've got a

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Speaker 1: little story I want to tell the lead us into

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Speaker 1: our topic. Now. Obviously it is October. It's our favorite

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Speaker 1: time of year to talk about monsters. We talked about

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Speaker 1: monsters anyway, but this is the time where we really

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Speaker 1: double down. Its clear mandate for monsters, and I got

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Speaker 1: to take a monster science adventure this past month. So

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Speaker 1: this this past month, early on one Sunday morning, my

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Speaker 1: wife Rachel and I were in Canada and we woke

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Speaker 1: up before dawn on this Sunday morning in the town

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Speaker 1: of Golden British Columbia. It's in western Canada, the Canadian Rockies,

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Speaker 1: and we had some coffee and bagels, and we filled

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Speaker 1: up our backpacks with a bunch of layers of warm clothes,

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Speaker 1: bottles of water, all that hiking stuff, and we drove

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Speaker 1: along the steep mountain sides to this tiny town called

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Speaker 1: Field in British Columbia. And there we parked beside a

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Speaker 1: gas station and we waited to meet our guide and

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Speaker 1: the rest of this tour group. So the guide was

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Speaker 1: a paleontologist named David, and the hiking group was mostly

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Speaker 1: French speaking families, some really lovely people and some very

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Speaker 1: intelligent children with great questions like why do animals die? Uh?

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Speaker 1: And so we hiked through the town of Field and

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Speaker 1: along this uphill path through the forest up the side

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Speaker 1: of Mount Stephen. And as we went on throughout the day,

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Speaker 1: the trail got steeper and steeper, and we could see

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Speaker 1: through the trees the town. We came from was becoming

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Speaker 1: this tiny miniature model in the distance. And then right

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Speaker 1: around midday we came out of the tree line and

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Speaker 1: we walked up on this bare plane of flat rocks

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Speaker 1: and they were pieces of the underlying shale formation that

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Speaker 1: had chipped and broken off, and they had gathered in

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Speaker 1: this relatively flat part of the mountain side. And on

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Speaker 1: this plane of rocks, you walk around and you pick

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Speaker 1: up these mineral fragments and they're full of fossils. It's

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Speaker 1: just fossils everywhere. Almost every other rock you find has

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Speaker 1: the shape of an animal from millions of years ago

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Speaker 1: printed into it. You're literally walking on thousands and thousands

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Speaker 1: of fossils. So you're in this this mountainous environment and David,

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Speaker 1: who by the way, i'm picturing as the Android from

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Speaker 1: Prometheus and Alien Covenant, is guiding you and showing you

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Speaker 1: these these prehistoric remnants in the rock. David was not

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Speaker 1: Michael Fastbender, but David was excellent. He was a really

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Speaker 1: really good guide. And this place we came to where

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Speaker 1: we were walking on fossils, this was the Mount Stephen

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Speaker 1: Trio bite beds. It is a graveyard of organisms from

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Speaker 1: the Cambrian period about five hundred million years ago. Now.

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Speaker 1: Mount Stephen is in an area that's home to the

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Speaker 1: Urgess Shale geological formation, which is one of the most

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Speaker 1: important sites of Cambrian Period fossils in the world. And

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Speaker 1: if you ever get a chance to do one of

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Speaker 1: these hikes, I highly highly recommended. I think it literally

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Speaker 1: might be the coolest thing I've ever done. You have

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Speaker 1: to book them through this organization called the Burgess Shale

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Speaker 1: Geoscience Foundation, and they pair you with a guide. Our guide, David,

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Speaker 1: the paleontologist, was an excellent science communicator. He was really

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Speaker 1: good with the kids on the group, and he was

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Speaker 1: a great hiking guide. So if you get a chance

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Speaker 1: to go with David, big thumbs up to him. Be

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Speaker 1: warned if you do try to do this, it's a

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Speaker 1: tough hike. It's like eight kilometers round trip horizontally with

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Speaker 1: a seven hundred and ninety five meter elevation gain, which

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Speaker 1: is like two thousand, six hundred feet and uh and

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Speaker 1: that's starting at like twelve hundred or th hundred meters

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Speaker 1: of elevation at the at the base of the mountain.

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Speaker 1: Uh So the air is thin and it's worth doing

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Speaker 1: some other hikes at higher elevation to get yourself accustomed

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Speaker 1: to the lack of oxygen. But I also don't want

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Speaker 1: to scare you too much. Obviously I will. I am

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Speaker 1: no kind of athlete or experienced altitude hiker or anything

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Speaker 1: like that, and I survived so beer advising listeners to

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Speaker 1: wear their best flip flops this particular, just be prepared,

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Speaker 1: have some layers, have some water, do a little practice.

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Speaker 1: If you can make the trip, it is absolutely worth

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Speaker 1: it to see these fossils firsthand. You can pick them up,

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Speaker 1: you can feel the ribs of these Cambrian organisms. You

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Speaker 1: can you can feel the contours of their bodies as

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Speaker 1: they printed on this ancient shale. But also it's really

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Speaker 1: cool to be there, just because the area around field,

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Speaker 1: including Mount Stephen, trial By Beds and the Burgess Shale

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Speaker 1: quarry quarries, are just arguably the most important Cambrian fossil

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Speaker 1: sites in the world. They are a geological window into

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Speaker 1: a time stranger, I would argue than any alien planet

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Speaker 1: in any movie, any book, any video game, any Star

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Speaker 1: Trek episode. I think the real alien monsters h And

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Speaker 1: of course, as you if you know the show, you

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Speaker 1: know use the term monster affectionately. It's not a pejorative.

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Speaker 1: The real alien monsters are not out there on some

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Speaker 1: exo planet. They were right here five million years ago,

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Speaker 1: and in this one amazing place you can sort of

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Speaker 1: crunch through their frozen graveyard and it's awesome. Now, Joe,

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Speaker 1: do you find yourself falling into the same admittedly dumb

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Speaker 1: trap that I do when I when I think about

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Speaker 1: about the nationalities that are sort of overlaid regarding a

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Speaker 1: fossil uh findes like these are Canadian Cambrian monsters and

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Speaker 1: stuff like that. Like, yeah, because I was recently reading

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Speaker 1: to my son about Terra saurs and was reading about

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Speaker 1: the about about Bavarian fossils of Terra saurs, and is

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Speaker 1: as silly as it is, I couldn't help but think

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Speaker 1: of of Bavarian Terra stars thinking about the Varian rhistoric creature,

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Speaker 1: like wearing later hosen the big big stein of beer,

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Speaker 1: And it's so unfair. You know, I've done the same

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Speaker 1: thing thinking of Mongolian fossil finds. In our previous episode

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Speaker 1: we talked about various raptors I believe remember it was

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Speaker 1: the velociraptor or Dononicus. But I could not help but

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Speaker 1: then think about them in terms of like human history

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Speaker 1: regarding that area and part of his pack. Uh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. And that does

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Speaker 1: highlight the need to sort of explain how the Cambrian

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Speaker 1: world was so different than our world, not just that

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Speaker 1: it had different animals in it, but that planet Earth

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Speaker 1: was different then. So when I say it was an

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Speaker 1: alien planet, I mean that quite literally. It's not just

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Speaker 1: that it had different fauna, it was a It was

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Speaker 1: a totally different place to live. And so before we

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Speaker 1: get into exploring these monsters of the Cambrian Period, these

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Speaker 1: beautiful and bizarre creatures that you couldn't even dream up

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Speaker 1: if you tried, I think we should take a look

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Speaker 1: at the Cambrian Period itself and explain what it was

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Speaker 1: like to be Terra five hundred million years ago. So

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Speaker 1: the Cambrian Period lasted from about five hundred forty to

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Speaker 1: about four hundred and eighty five million years ago, and

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Speaker 1: if you were dropped from today straight into the Cambrian period,

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Speaker 1: you would not recognize planet Earth. The Earth, for one thing,

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Speaker 1: revolved faster than it does now, So days were only

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Speaker 1: about twenty one hours long, and there were about four

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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty of them in a year. The air

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Speaker 1: would be hot, so the average global surface temperature would

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Speaker 1: have been about ten degrees celsius hotter than today. That's

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Speaker 1: a good bit hotter. The atmosphere, while it did have

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Speaker 1: significant free oxygen, at this point, was not quite what

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Speaker 1: it is today. It would have felt a little bit

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Speaker 1: thick with carbon dioxide in your lungs. If you happen

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Speaker 1: to see dry land, it would probably look more like

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Speaker 1: the surface of Mars than Earth today. Because land dwelling

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Speaker 1: plants didn't exist yet. It's kind of hard to imagine

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Speaker 1: Earth that way. And without plant roots to hold the

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Speaker 1: soil in place, lands surfaces eroded very easily in the

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Speaker 1: wind and the churning water. So you know, the continents

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Speaker 1: are constantly just kind of burning away into the oceans

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Speaker 1: and being reformed. So to call back to a previous

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Speaker 1: episode we did, was this was definitely a world before fire.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because what would it what would it burn? Right? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I can't be sure it was totally without fire,

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Speaker 1: but I mean, yeah, obviously not fire on the scale

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Speaker 1: we see of wildfires in forests today. Because there was

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Speaker 1: oxygen in the atmosphere at this point, but yeah, what

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Speaker 1: what would burn? What would the fuel be? All Right,

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Speaker 1: So we have this alien world with just a barren

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Speaker 1: land when visible, and then we have this this ocean,

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Speaker 1: this strange ocean, and the Cambrians Earth that that's not

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Speaker 1: a story about land at all. That is a story

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Speaker 1: about ocean. It was the ocean planet at that point.

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Speaker 1: You could probably make the argument it's the ocean planet

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Speaker 1: right now, but it definitely was then. According to Cambrian

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Speaker 1: Ocean World Ancient Sea Life of North America by John

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Speaker 1: Foster uh the love all of the seas rose steadily

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Speaker 1: in this saw tooth rise and fall pattern throughout the

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Speaker 1: Cambrian period. So at the beginning of the period sea

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Speaker 1: level was actually a little bit lower than it is today,

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Speaker 1: But by the end of the Late Cambrian sea level

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Speaker 1: was about a hundred and sixty meters or five and

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Speaker 1: thirty feet higher than it is today. So in today's terms,

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Speaker 1: New York underwater, Rome underwater, Paris underwater, Baghdad underwater, even

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Speaker 1: parts of Moscow underwater, and the high sea level in

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Speaker 1: the Cambrian led to flooding of about forty percent of

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Speaker 1: the area of Earth's continental masses. Compared that to today,

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Speaker 1: we're only about five percent of that continental area is

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Speaker 1: covered in water, so most of our planets dry land

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Speaker 1: mass was gathered together closer to the south pole, and

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Speaker 1: the continent that became North America was then called Laurentia,

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Speaker 1: not then called by people who have been people today

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Speaker 1: called that continent than Laurentia, and you sort of have

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Speaker 1: to imagine North America turned sideways, mostly flooded, straddling the equator.

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Speaker 1: Also adding to the alien quality in the Cambrian astronomy

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Speaker 1: would have been a little bit different. So the Moon

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Speaker 1: was more than twenty kilometers closer to Earth than meaning

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Speaker 1: that its gravity was stronger, meaning the high and low

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Speaker 1: tides on Earth were higher and lower. Okay, you know

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Speaker 1: my son was just talking to him to me the

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Speaker 1: other day about the size of the moon and prehistoric times.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like he knew that the moon was bigger

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Speaker 1: in prehistoric times. Yeah, and uh, and knows that it

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Speaker 1: will be it will be smaller in future times. Did

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Speaker 1: he into it that or did he find that out somewhere?

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Speaker 1: He consumes a lot of dinosaur train and he really

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Speaker 1: likes this podcast, Wow in the World. That's a great

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Speaker 1: science podcast for for kids. So and then you know,

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Speaker 1: we talked to him a lot about science. Man, I

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Speaker 1: wish I was that cool when I was, I probably

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Speaker 1: just would have told you about like which ninja turtle

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Speaker 1: was bigger in prehistoric times. Yeah, so far ninja turtles

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Speaker 1: will probably come in and wash it all the way.

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Speaker 1: But for now, he's really really into the thing, like

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Speaker 1: an alien ocean driving away the continents. Okay, So if

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Speaker 1: we looked under that ancient ocean, that's where the real

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Speaker 1: craziness comes in, because we would find this vast realm

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Speaker 1: of gorgeous, terrifying, surreal monsters that would look completely unlike

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Speaker 1: the kind of Earth life we're familiar with today. Because

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Speaker 1: the Cambrian period is the geological layer where we see

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Speaker 1: evidence of one of the most fascinating and mysterious events

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Speaker 1: in the history of life on Earth, known as the

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Speaker 1: Cambrian Explosion. So explosion. What exploded? Was this like a

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Speaker 1: bunch of volcanoes or something? No, the Cambrian explosion is

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Speaker 1: a story about biodiversity. So, Robert, how old is the Earth? Oh,

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Speaker 1: it's so at four and a half billion years old. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's the general astronomical idea. So four and a half

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Speaker 1: billion years old. We've had this planet roughly, and we

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Speaker 1: know there's been single celled life on the planet for

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Speaker 1: at least maybe three and a half billion years or so,

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Speaker 1: based on fossil traces left behind by these organisms. And

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Speaker 1: new findings keep pushing the debatable frontier of earliest life

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Speaker 1: farther and farther back into the darkness of Earth time.

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Speaker 1: One example, I just came across So the other day,

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Speaker 1: just earlier this year, in March seventeen, there was an

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Speaker 1: article published in Nature arguing that apparent microbe fossils in

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Speaker 1: the New Vue Agatuck Belt in Quebec are about three

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Speaker 1: point eight billion and possibly four point three billion years old,

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Speaker 1: somewhere in that range, and these single celled life forms

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Speaker 1: would have been surviving around hydrothermal vents and had this

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Speaker 1: biochemistry based on eating and excreting iron. That's that's like

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Speaker 1: a comic book film, right, yeah, the iron eater. And

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Speaker 1: the crazy thing is that if these findings are correct,

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Speaker 1: life on Earth would have began within just a few

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Speaker 1: hundred million years of the planet first accreting together in space.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to believe, but whether life on

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Speaker 1: Earth began like four point two billion years go or

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Speaker 1: more recently. We know that for a long long time,

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Speaker 1: life on Earth wasn't becoming much more complex, right. There

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Speaker 1: was no serious multicellular life, So no animals, no fish

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Speaker 1: and reptiles, no birds, no plants, no mushrooms, just microbial

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Speaker 1: organisms like bacteria and archaea floating around in the oceans,

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Speaker 1: forming mats and films and occasionally occasionally building these giant

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Speaker 1: mineral brains in the surf called strummtallites. So this would

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Speaker 1: be if this were a science fiction film, this would

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Speaker 1: be the least cinematic alien life form encounter unless it

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Speaker 1: made people like, you know, horribly sick obviously, or possessed them.

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Speaker 1: Biofilm planet, yeah, yeah, the planet of slime. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: was would be the episode of of Star Trek that

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Speaker 1: that does not does not make it to the series. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that's you know, that would have been the story

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Speaker 1: of Earth for most of Earth's history, not having any

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Speaker 1: kind of interesting animals or anything like that. Not to

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Speaker 1: say that microbes aren't interesting in themselves, but maybe less

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Speaker 1: interesting to look at. It would have been slime planet. Yeah. Generally,

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Speaker 1: this is the stuff that occupies one, maybe two pages

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Speaker 1: of a of a large prehistoric life book before you

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Speaker 1: get onto the more exciting things, the things that children

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Speaker 1: can imagine fighting each other. But it's most of the

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Speaker 1: life that's ever happened. And then billions of years later,

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Speaker 1: at the beginning of the Cambrian Period, something happens very suddenly.

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Speaker 1: Loads of insane animals show up. And when I say suddenly,

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Speaker 1: I have to qualify that that's suddenly from a geological

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Speaker 1: point of view, which in reality means it took millions

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Speaker 1: of years about five hundred and forty million years ago

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Speaker 1: to about five hundred million years ago. But that's still

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Speaker 1: pretty suddenly compared to the age of the Earth. And

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Speaker 1: this geologically rapid spike in animal diversity delivers creatures with

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Speaker 1: bilateral symmetry, with large bodies, with eyes, with legs, with shells,

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Speaker 1: with segmented body parts. You've got all of these crazy

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Speaker 1: different types of creatures suddenly showing up, and it's like

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Speaker 1: where did they all come from? Yeah, it's like all

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Speaker 1: these prototypes are rolled out at once. It's like the

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Speaker 1: segment in is it is a RoboCop one or two

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Speaker 1: where we get all the crazy prototypes that, oh, that's

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Speaker 1: a RoboCop two. Yes, yeah, it's one of our favorite

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Speaker 1: points of comparison on the show for biology. Uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: you have suddenly all these different, you know, seemingly crazy

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Speaker 1: examples of life, and many of many of which don't

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Speaker 1: seem to to fall in easily into that category of well,

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Speaker 1: this is a precursor to something we have later on.

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Speaker 1: It's a precursor to something we have today now. Of course,

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Speaker 1: for some people with negative attitudes towards evolutionary science, this

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Speaker 1: provides some kind of rhetorical ammunition, right indeed, I mean

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Speaker 1: the explosion is often exploited by evolution of niers, even Darwin,

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Speaker 1: we have to note thought that the explosion was at

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Speaker 1: odds with the normal evolutionary process, which in a funny

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Speaker 1: way could be true, but not in the way an

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Speaker 1: evolution denier would mean. A couple of thoughts. Evolution is

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Speaker 1: we're familiar with it today, tends to take place within

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Speaker 1: ecosystems in which every niche is already filled. So basically,

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Speaker 1: every way there is for a creature to make a living,

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Speaker 1: there's already something trying to do that. So if you

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Speaker 1: want to compete, you've got to outcompete these other organisms.

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Speaker 1: The global ocean of the Cambrian on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: represented a world in which it seems like there was

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Speaker 1: still tremendous ecological opportunity to occupy, Like there was territory

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Speaker 1: in the ecology that didn't have any existing competition. So

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Speaker 1: it was a time in which an animal could start

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Speaker 1: doing something to eat or to otherwise survive, and no

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Speaker 1: other species was already doing that thing. There was just

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Speaker 1: sort of like free land to grab. Yeah, like yeah,

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Speaker 1: land grab call the frontier, except without other organisms already

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Speaker 1: occupying it. So that there could be one explanation for

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Speaker 1: why evolution seems to be working differently at this one

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Speaker 1: period in history than it has since. But also the

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Speaker 1: Young Earth creationist who exploits ongoing abates in biology to

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Speaker 1: sort of resort to the supernatural. They're employing a fallacy

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Speaker 1: in rhetoric known as the argument from ignorance fallacy, which

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Speaker 1: means like, I don't know what caused something, therefore the

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Speaker 1: cause is x uh. Example, you don't know who committed

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Speaker 1: the Jack the Ripper murders, therefore it was interdimensional sasquatches. Now,

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Speaker 1: the version employed here, of course, says, you can't all

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Speaker 1: agree we don't know on what caused the sudden or

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Speaker 1: geologically sudden biodiversity of the Cambrian explosion. Therefore, the cause

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Speaker 1: is supernatural. Now, this line of thinking obviously doesn't get

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Speaker 1: you anywhere once you examine it, but the disagreement and

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Speaker 1: debate over the cause is a fascinating, outstanding question, and

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Speaker 1: it's something I think we want to entertain a few

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Speaker 1: answers to today. Now, some of the hypotheses are primarily

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Speaker 1: environmental and chemical. Right, so some scientists have proposed that

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Speaker 1: the cause of the camera and explosion could be a

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Speaker 1: rise in the content of oxygen in the atmosphere, which

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Speaker 1: leads to an increase in the level of dissolved oxygen

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Speaker 1: and the oceans. Now, of course, remember that Earth's original

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Speaker 1: atmosphere did not have free oxygen, right, That was added

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Speaker 1: to the atmosphere gradually as a waste product of photosynthesis.

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Speaker 1: You have all these microbes out there and they're eating

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Speaker 1: the sunlight and then their geoengineering the atmosphere with their

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Speaker 1: waste products, which included oxygen. The gradual natural terraforming of

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Speaker 1: our world. Yeah, the microbial terraforming of Earth, which absolutely

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Speaker 1: did happen in the past, and that's where we get

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Speaker 1: our oxygen. Now, when you think about it. Large, fast

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Speaker 1: moving animals need lots of oxygen to feed their energy

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Speaker 1: hungry tissues. Like think of the way that when you

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Speaker 1: move your muscles a lot, your body starts greedily gulping

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Speaker 1: down more and more air. In the same way, if

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Speaker 1: you think about these organisms in the past, suddenly you

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Speaker 1: wanted to have organisms with large bodies. They would have

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Speaker 1: needed access to oxygen. So maybe when that oxygen became available,

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Speaker 1: suddenly you could build these big, fast moving bodies and

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Speaker 1: you get all this animal biodiversity. So previously the the

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Speaker 1: oxygen economy would not support this kind of growth, right,

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Speaker 1: But the idea is then it would. So did a

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Speaker 1: sudden increase in oxygen drive the explosion? Well, some recent

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Speaker 1: studies have cast doubt on this hypothesis, including one published

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Speaker 1: in Nature by Spurling at all uh and it basically

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Speaker 1: did not find evidence of a significant increase of oxygen

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Speaker 1: in ocean water at the beginning of the Cambrian So

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Speaker 1: evidence shows that if there was an increase in oxygen

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Speaker 1: at the Cambrian transition, it was kind of a small one.

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Speaker 1: Al Right, Well, what else do we have? Well, other

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Speaker 1: hypotheses are more biological and ecological, like what if there

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Speaker 1: was one type of biological innovation, some new way for

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Speaker 1: animals to make a living or new thing. Animals could

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Speaker 1: do that rapidly accelerated competition with an ecosystems, which would

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Speaker 1: speed up natural selection and cause new species to form

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Speaker 1: much more rapidly. How about the example of site. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is a big yeah. So previous animals they might

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Speaker 1: have had some kind of photosensitive spots or receptors that

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Speaker 1: would have allowed them to, for example, move towards the sunlight.

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Speaker 1: But the Cambrian is the first period in history where

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Speaker 1: we have evidence of complex site organs, you know, eyes.

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Speaker 1: It's the age of organisms with compound eyes. So imagine

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Speaker 1: how much adaptive pressure would be put on you if

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Speaker 1: you lived in a world where all creatures were basically

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Speaker 1: blind and then suddenly some of your competitors could see. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is this is a crazy thing to try to imagine,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, just just think of sight coming online in

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Speaker 1: a world and all the additional stuff that this entail.

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Speaker 1: Suddenly pigmentation begins to matter. I mean, it's hard to

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Speaker 1: even apply. You're one is tempted to apply this to

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Speaker 1: human arms race um, which is which is often an

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Speaker 1: an apt comparison. But I mean, what can we even

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Speaker 1: look to in human technology and human weapons systems. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'm just thinking maybe you could apply it. You can

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Speaker 1: compare it to flight and say that, well, once, once

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Speaker 1: human technology allowed us to take to the air, that

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Speaker 1: created an entire new theater of war, and they also

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Speaker 1: changed the existing theaters of war. And I think you

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Speaker 1: could make that comparison pretty well, like flight changed the

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Speaker 1: nature of warfare forever, Like suddenly just having like lots

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Speaker 1: of ground troops didn't didn't matter a whole lot, right,

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Speaker 1: But this, this seems more extensive than that. You know,

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Speaker 1: It's like it's it's the opening of another dimension of

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Speaker 1: competition in a way. Yeah, and yeah, and you think

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Speaker 1: so you you mentioned pigmentation. Suddenly the colors you are matter,

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Speaker 1: like blending in matters. But also think about the way

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Speaker 1: it would make movement matter. It would make the shapes

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Speaker 1: of bodies matter. It would just completely change all the

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Speaker 1: dynamics of how creatures interacted with one another. Yeah, not

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Speaker 1: only prey predator interactions, but of course just interspecies of communication, uh,

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Speaker 1: and as well as mating, etcetera. I mean, every thing

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Speaker 1: changes because of this. Yeah, So We'll come back to

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Speaker 1: look at more of these answers to this question throughout

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Speaker 1: the episode, but I think we should take our first

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Speaker 1: break and then we come back. We will look at

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Speaker 1: one of the first major inhabitants of our Cambrian monster House.

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Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So as we roll through these,

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Speaker 1: I also want everyone to think of potential Halloween costume ideas,

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Speaker 1: because I think we have some We have some wonderful

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Speaker 1: prehistoric monsters here that I think are more inventive listeners

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Speaker 1: might be able to turn into a mask or a

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Speaker 1: full body cost Okay, So I want you Starship Troopers

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Speaker 1: fans out there to get a little bit excited about

428
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:41,920
Speaker 1: stone Bug Planet fans of the book or the movie, well,

429
00:24:41,960 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: I mean they both got bugs. Okay. So in eight

430
00:24:45,480 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 1: six there's a Canadian geologist by the name of Richard McConnell,

431
00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 1: and he's visiting the town of Field, the same town

432
00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:54,480
Speaker 1: I went to when I began the walk up Mount

433
00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:59,280
Speaker 1: Stephen Field, British Columbia, where some railroad workers told him

434
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:01,719
Speaker 1: they had found so then creepy on the slopes of

435
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: nearby Mount Stephen. They were these things that they called

436
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 1: quote stone bugs, and these were in fact, trilobytes the

437
00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:15,679
Speaker 1: best known inhabitants of the Cambrian oceans. Now, trialobytes are

438
00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:17,919
Speaker 1: not a single species, but there are a class of

439
00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:21,560
Speaker 1: extinct animals from the phylum Arthropoda, and so that would

440
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:25,359
Speaker 1: be the same phylum that includes, for example, insects and crustaceans,

441
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:30,760
Speaker 1: lobsters or arthropods. Insects and spiders or arthropods. These exoskeleton creatures,

442
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:35,640
Speaker 1: now trialobytes were an enormously successful form of life, beginning

443
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:38,680
Speaker 1: in the Cambrian and surviving for about three hundred million

444
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:41,240
Speaker 1: years until they were wiped out about two hundred and

445
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:45,320
Speaker 1: fifty million years ago in the Permian Triassic extinction event

446
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:48,400
Speaker 1: also known as the Great Dyeing, which was the biggest

447
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:52,320
Speaker 1: mass extinction in the history of planet Earth. About nent

448
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:57,200
Speaker 1: of all marine species went extinct. It's kind of hard

449
00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:01,200
Speaker 1: to imagine, but until then, trial bites were like sort

450
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:05,080
Speaker 1: of like the insects of today, just this enormously successful,

451
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:08,800
Speaker 1: the type of creature found everywhere. They were a swarm

452
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,360
Speaker 1: upon the face of the deep or as I kind

453
00:26:11,359 --> 00:26:13,520
Speaker 1: of want to think of them as the infinity bugs.

454
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: I like it. So the trio byte body structure kind

455
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:19,640
Speaker 1: of resembles like a roly poly or a pill bug,

456
00:26:20,040 --> 00:26:23,399
Speaker 1: maybe crossed with a horseshoe crab. It's got these articulated

457
00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:26,480
Speaker 1: segments lining its back, and if you look at it

458
00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 1: from the top down, you'll see this flat, hard shell

459
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 1: made of a matrix of tiny calcite needles. And if

460
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:36,360
Speaker 1: you look at it on the vulnerable underside, you'll see

461
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:39,399
Speaker 1: the legs and the gills and the mouth. And actually

462
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:41,320
Speaker 1: it does kind of look like a like a roly

463
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:43,320
Speaker 1: poly or a pill bug on the underside too, if

464
00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:44,920
Speaker 1: you ever see them. Yeah, I have to say the

465
00:26:44,960 --> 00:26:48,160
Speaker 1: Trilobyte of all the creatures were going to discuss today, Well,

466
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:50,560
Speaker 1: first of all, it's the most famous, I think, so

467
00:26:51,119 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: most of you have probably seen images of it before.

468
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:59,360
Speaker 1: But it also does look a lot more like existing creatures.

469
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 1: It doesn't if you, if you didn't know better, you

470
00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 1: could easily see an image of this and think that

471
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:06,679
Speaker 1: it could be something living today. Yeah. I think the

472
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:11,400
Speaker 1: creepiness of the triobyte world comes not from seeing their

473
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 1: body plans, because you can see stuff that looks kind

474
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: of like them, Like you say, it's just how many

475
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,400
Speaker 1: of them there were, and thinking of this being one

476
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:22,760
Speaker 1: of the dominant body plans on the planet or the

477
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 1: dominant body plan on the planet. And if you're still

478
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:27,320
Speaker 1: drawing a blank as to what this looks like, I'm

479
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,439
Speaker 1: going to include images of of all the species that

480
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:32,640
Speaker 1: we're discussing here on the landing page for this episode.

481
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:35,359
Speaker 1: It's stuff to blow your mind dot com. All right,

482
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:38,000
Speaker 1: So we've had to look at the creature's legs. Let's

483
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:42,040
Speaker 1: turn this puppy around. Okay, turn it so if you

484
00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: look at it from the top down, you can basically

485
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 1: divide a trialobyte in three both ways, so if you

486
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: look at it lengthwise, you're looking at it head on. Lengthwise,

487
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 1: there is bilateral symmetry, and this is the cameraan period.

488
00:27:54,880 --> 00:27:58,120
Speaker 1: We see these animals with bilateral symmetry really taking over.

489
00:27:58,200 --> 00:28:00,320
Speaker 1: You can fold them in half and they're like a book.

490
00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:04,439
Speaker 1: They match on both sides. And in that lengthwise direction,

491
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:07,080
Speaker 1: the trilobyte is divided into three lobes. You've got the

492
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:10,160
Speaker 1: axial lobe, which runs down the middle from the head

493
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 1: to the tail, kind of like the spine of the

494
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:14,919
Speaker 1: book or like the spine of a vertebrate. And then

495
00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:17,600
Speaker 1: you've got the two plural lobes on each side. Which

496
00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: you're shielding the legs from above. There were these you know,

497
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:23,480
Speaker 1: shelled lobes stick out on the side and they cover

498
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:26,399
Speaker 1: up where the legs would be moving underneath. Now you

499
00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:29,680
Speaker 1: rotate at ninety degrees, and then you've got another three sections.

500
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:32,919
Speaker 1: You've got the head known as the cephalon, the middle

501
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 1: section known as the thorax, and the rear section known

502
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 1: as the pigidium. Now, one thing you might wonder, why

503
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:42,400
Speaker 1: do we see these articulated segments on the shell of

504
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:44,840
Speaker 1: a trilobyte, Like, why doesn't it have something more like

505
00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: a big solid turtle shell? You know, why why the

506
00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:54,160
Speaker 1: different plates overlapping? Well, there are multiple answers, but one

507
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:58,280
Speaker 1: is that apparently some trilobytes were able to partially curl

508
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:01,480
Speaker 1: up and protect their soft or bellies, like an armadillo

509
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: or a pillbug. Yeah, it's so. Do you do you

510
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 1: use the word pillbug or roly poly? Do I think

511
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 1: they're the same thing, the same creature or the same

512
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:15,600
Speaker 1: you know, classification of creatures at the very least. But yeah,

513
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: I grew up with roly poly. I think I did too,

514
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: And somehow in my adulthood transition to pillbug, I've sold

515
00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:25,600
Speaker 1: out my childhood wonders. It does sound significantly less silly. Well, anyway,

516
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:28,800
Speaker 1: trial bite fossils are that. That's what you're walking on

517
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:30,800
Speaker 1: in the Mount Stephen trial by beds, right. So you

518
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: walk around, you crunch through these things, you pick up

519
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:35,520
Speaker 1: these rocks and they've got these little shells in them,

520
00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:39,080
Speaker 1: and the trial bite fossils are so common you can

521
00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 1: get the sense that these animals must have been stacked

522
00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 1: a mile high when they actually existed, right. There were

523
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 1: a lot of them in the Cambrian but they're perhaps

524
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:51,719
Speaker 1: overrepresented in the fossil record because many of the fossilized

525
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 1: shells we find are not the animals themselves, but the

526
00:29:55,920 --> 00:30:00,719
Speaker 1: discarded shells left over from the molting process. So, like

527
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:03,719
Speaker 1: Arthur pods today, trial bytes were himmed in by this

528
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 1: protective shell, and if they wanted to grow bigger, they

529
00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:10,400
Speaker 1: had to molt, which meant discarding that protective outer layer

530
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 1: and temporarily risking a soft bodied existence in order to

531
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:17,760
Speaker 1: grow that larger, harder shell. It would be like if

532
00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: there were a prehistoric hominid creature that left multiple skeletons,

533
00:30:22,800 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 1: you know, which is of course impossible, but with an

534
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 1: exoskeleton is is completely is very possible. Well, the vulnerability

535
00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 1: of molting makes me think about the comparison to a

536
00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 1: human newborn. You know, when when babies are born, they

537
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have all their their hard protective skeletal parts yet,

538
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:41,640
Speaker 1: and I have a lot of unfused together the unfused

539
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 1: skull for example, and the soft cartilaginous body parts where

540
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:49,600
Speaker 1: you really do make yourself vulnerable when you're first born.

541
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 1: But of course they're depending on the fact that mammals

542
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:54,720
Speaker 1: have protective parents that will try to prevent injury to

543
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 1: their offspring when they're young and vulnerable trial bites. I

544
00:30:57,840 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 1: don't know if they're they're quite so protective of their

545
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: I mean you could say that puberty is kind of

546
00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 1: a molting period where where where we tend to be

547
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:09,280
Speaker 1: soft and vulnerable, if not in if not in mentally,

548
00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:14,520
Speaker 1: at least mentally. Yeah. Uh so, that's interesting to think

549
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:17,320
Speaker 1: of the molting process having an impact on the sheer

550
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: number of fossilized remains. But but then on top of that,

551
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 1: of course, it makes you analyze, and we've discussed this

552
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 1: on the show before, like what makes a creature more

553
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:31,920
Speaker 1: liable to be fossilized and I mean, you look at

554
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: the creatures that are fossilized in any great number. It's

555
00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 1: not going to be an apex predator living in a

556
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:39,240
Speaker 1: dry region. It's going to be something like a low

557
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: level and bird invertebrate that lives in the muck, something

558
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:46,520
Speaker 1: that gets buried quickly. Uh, and that leaves behind hard

559
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 1: body parts near water, especially right. So the great the

560
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:53,120
Speaker 1: great land squid of old right, has not been preserved.

561
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 1: But their beaks are many. Oh, yes, that's right. We

562
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: would get the beaks. Yeah, these beds of beaks. We've

563
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 1: under what they are. Yeah. But because there are so

564
00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:06,200
Speaker 1: many triobyte fossils, and because they're so strange and so

565
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:09,239
Speaker 1: alien to the modern life forms we encounter in our

566
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:10,959
Speaker 1: day to day lives, I mean they might be they

567
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:13,960
Speaker 1: might bear some resemblance to insects, for example, right, and

568
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:17,480
Speaker 1: this is why railroad worker might call them stone bugs.

569
00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 1: But it's no surprise that they show up in human

570
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:22,000
Speaker 1: culture too. I wanted to mention one cool example I

571
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: came across. Remember Adrian Mayor, who wrote the first fossil Hunters.

572
00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:28,280
Speaker 1: We talked about her in our in our what was

573
00:32:28,320 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: it the geomethology? Yes, yes, this had to do with

574
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 1: how did ancient people look at fossil life remains? Didn't

575
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 1: I think they were monsters? That they think they were dragons? Yeah? Yeah?

576
00:32:39,120 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: And did did these ideas of mythical monsters come from

577
00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 1: people finding fossils? So she's got another boat called Fossil

578
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:48,920
Speaker 1: Legends of the First Americans, and she writes of how

579
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:52,680
Speaker 1: triobyte fossils were apparently used as protective amulets by some

580
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 1: of the Ute people of Utah. So this one story

581
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 1: is that in the early nineteen hundreds there was an

582
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: amateur natural historian named Frank back With, and he noticed

583
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:04,800
Speaker 1: a trial bite necklace at a Ute burial site. So

584
00:33:04,840 --> 00:33:07,720
Speaker 1: he asked some friends of his name, Joseph and Tedford

585
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: pick of It, who were members of the tribe, what

586
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 1: this meant, and they told him that the fossil was

587
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 1: called Timpei kansavaci, which meant little water bug in stone

588
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:21,760
Speaker 1: and Beckwith also records that the men told him that

589
00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 1: their elders believed that wearing the trial bites could protect

590
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 1: against sickness and bullets. But I thought that's kind of

591
00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 1: cool that look somehow the fossils were intuited to have

592
00:33:31,880 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: been water dwelling creatures, and I wonder how people would

593
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: have figured that out back then. I thought that was

594
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 1: really interesting. Yeah, especially given that there would be there

595
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,040
Speaker 1: would be plenty of terrestrial invertebrates to compare it to.

596
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:47,800
Speaker 1: I guess maybe they maybe they saw more of the

597
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: of the crab in this creature than they did, uh,

598
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 1: you know, terrestrial bugs. I know, I wouldn't have been

599
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:55,600
Speaker 1: that perceptive. I would have called it like roly Poly

600
00:33:55,840 --> 00:34:00,360
Speaker 1: or something. Well, anyway, considering that all the there are

601
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 1: all these shells everywhere, another possible answer to the question

602
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:08,280
Speaker 1: of what caused the Cambrian explosion comes up? What if

603
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:12,279
Speaker 1: the Cambrian explosion is an illusion? What if it is

604
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: not so much an event in history where all these

605
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:19,640
Speaker 1: animals suddenly emerged, but a misperception created by the types

606
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: of evidence available to us, a reporting error exactly, It

607
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:27,240
Speaker 1: would be a sampling bias. How would that be. Well,

608
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:30,000
Speaker 1: like we've been talking about, we know fossilization has this

609
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:33,920
Speaker 1: serious preference for hard body parts, and it appears to

610
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:37,920
Speaker 1: be around the Cambrian period that biomineralization, right, the forming

611
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:41,720
Speaker 1: of these mineral based body parts like skeletons and shells,

612
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 1: that that became common in many different animals. It's the

613
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: age of shells and exoskeletons. So it could be that

614
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:53,080
Speaker 1: many animal forms had precedent in the Precambrian era, that

615
00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:56,360
Speaker 1: there were there were animals sort of like them living before,

616
00:34:56,760 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: and it's simply that we don't have good records of

617
00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:03,080
Speaker 1: them because they were aren't making hard body parts yet. Okay,

618
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: so this makes sense. So it's not it's it's not

619
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:07,400
Speaker 1: that just suddenly there are all these creatures around with

620
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: their hard shells. There were plenty of creatures around beforehand.

621
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 1: It's just those were not preserved. Those are not as

622
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:14,840
Speaker 1: president the fossil record, right, because they didn't have the

623
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:19,240
Speaker 1: hard shells. Yeah. On the other hand, even soft animals

624
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: leave some fossil traces like tracks and burrows, And generally,

625
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:28,240
Speaker 1: I think paleontolog just think that these types of fossils

626
00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 1: are not as abundant as they would seem to be

627
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:34,760
Speaker 1: if the Precambrian world was basically a soft, flappy copy

628
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:37,440
Speaker 1: of the Cambrian. But either way, this leads us to

629
00:35:37,480 --> 00:35:39,760
Speaker 1: a kind of new way of framing the Cambrian question.

630
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:43,560
Speaker 1: If the Camerian explosion is characterized as this explosion of

631
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:46,920
Speaker 1: animal body plans, and especially those with hard body parts.

632
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:50,240
Speaker 1: Why do the hard body parts show up? Like? Where

633
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:53,480
Speaker 1: do they come from? Why evolve shells? And this leads

634
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:56,760
Speaker 1: us to another possible answer to the to the cause

635
00:35:56,800 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: of the Cambrian explosion. What if it was caused by

636
00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 1: a by aological innovation like predation? Oh so like you,

637
00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 1: So you have all of these creatures that have that

638
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: have evolved and then suddenly they realized, Hey, we can

639
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:12,279
Speaker 1: just eat each other. I can I can just eat

640
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:15,279
Speaker 1: these guys. Why should I compete for the same same

641
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:17,680
Speaker 1: meal when I can make them my meal and then

642
00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:20,839
Speaker 1: I'm essentially eating what they already ate, Right, Why would

643
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:23,440
Speaker 1: I waste my time filter feeding when I can just

644
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:28,320
Speaker 1: eat ted over there? Yeah. So Eric Spurling, the Stanford

645
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:30,759
Speaker 1: paleontologist who is the lead author on one of the

646
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:33,279
Speaker 1: papers I mentioned earlier in this episode, he explained in

647
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:36,719
Speaker 1: a Nature News article earlier this year, or actually know

648
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:40,120
Speaker 1: it was last year, that he thinks a very modest

649
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:45,200
Speaker 1: increase in dissolved oxygen could have been enough to push

650
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:48,920
Speaker 1: the the ocean chemistry over the edge to allow for

651
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:53,440
Speaker 1: the emergence of predation and carnivory. As an ecological niche,

652
00:36:54,160 --> 00:36:58,480
Speaker 1: which would have thereafter driven evolution across the animal spectrum

653
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:01,880
Speaker 1: as this arms race between predator and prey emerged. In

654
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:04,839
Speaker 1: a world of predators, you need shells and you need

655
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: to be able to move. Yeah, alright, well this this

656
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:12,440
Speaker 1: sounds the sounds plausible, and there's some evidence that this

657
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:16,359
Speaker 1: is what was happening. Here's an odd fact. Sometimes trialobyte

658
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:21,240
Speaker 1: fossils are missing chunks, not because the fossils have been damaged,

659
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:25,320
Speaker 1: but apparently because the animals were One example, a specimen

660
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:29,240
Speaker 1: of the trial trialobyte illinoid is found in Walcott's Quarry

661
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 1: at the Burge of Shale, has this distinct W shape

662
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:35,640
Speaker 1: missing from its left side, as if something took this

663
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:38,640
Speaker 1: kind of two fanged bite out of it. So in

664
00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:42,000
Speaker 1: this alien ocean, and you have to imagine me, uh,

665
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:45,440
Speaker 1: in the voice of Ripley and aliens, who's laying the eggs?

666
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:50,400
Speaker 1: What's taking the bites out of these trilobytes. Maybe it's

667
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 1: less dramatic if if you put it that way, but

668
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:56,440
Speaker 1: but yeah, there's got to be something something else out there,

669
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:59,879
Speaker 1: some sort of predator that is that is chopping down

670
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: of these guys. And this leads us to the second

671
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 1: monster in our Cambrian monster House, the weird shrimp. Alright,

672
00:38:07,239 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 1: hold that thought, because we're gonna take a quick break,

673
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:11,279
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will we will get

674
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: to know the weird shrimp, which is truly unless you're already,

675
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:17,319
Speaker 1: you know, super familiar with this time period, I would

676
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:22,040
Speaker 1: say it's the first really alien creature of the Cambrian period.

677
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:29,000
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Okay. So in Ewo, a British

678
00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 1: Canadian paleontologist named Joseph Frederick Witty Eves was trying to

679
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:37,680
Speaker 1: figure out how to classify some odd Cambrian fossils that

680
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: looked like headless shrimp shells. You can look at pictures

681
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:46,160
Speaker 1: of these online, but um, you could see these five

682
00:38:46,239 --> 00:38:50,840
Speaker 1: hundred million year old imprints of these clawed tails and bodies,

683
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:53,879
Speaker 1: but the heads were always missing. Yeah, they look they

684
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:57,399
Speaker 1: basically look like entrees. Yeah. Yeah, it's like somebody pulled

685
00:38:57,440 --> 00:38:59,440
Speaker 1: the head off the shrimp and served it to you

686
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:03,280
Speaker 1: in a little cocktail glass. Now, he named the organism

687
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:08,239
Speaker 1: Anomala carus, which means weird shrimp or strange shrimp or

688
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:14,280
Speaker 1: odd shrimp, however you prefer. Meanwhile, Burgess shale pioneer Charles Walcott,

689
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 1: which who is the guy who the Walcott's Quarry at

690
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:19,719
Speaker 1: the Burgess Shield was named after, he collected and described

691
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:23,279
Speaker 1: a fossil of a different animal. These preserved remains only

692
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:28,960
Speaker 1: showed a large, disembodied mouth, a thick muscular ring shape,

693
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 1: surrounded by a circle of jagged teeth facing inward, and

694
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:35,440
Speaker 1: Walcott believed this mouth to be the remains of a

695
00:39:35,520 --> 00:39:38,839
Speaker 1: jellyfish that he named Patoya. Al Right, so this would

696
00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:41,640
Speaker 1: be the mouth of an otherwise soft creature, that was

697
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:44,399
Speaker 1: his argument. And all we have left is the mouth, right.

698
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:48,240
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until many decades later that researchers Harry

699
00:39:48,239 --> 00:39:51,640
Speaker 1: Whittington and Derek Briggs figured out that these two weird

700
00:39:51,719 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 1: anomalous animals were weird and anomalous because they were different

701
00:39:55,760 --> 00:40:00,719
Speaker 1: parts of the same creature, a huge Cambrian editor that

702
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:04,319
Speaker 1: retained the name of Anomala carus. The weird shrimp were

703
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:09,759
Speaker 1: actually a pair of clawed appendages basically mouth tentacles for

704
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 1: snatching up prey and shoving it into the mouth parts,

705
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:16,399
Speaker 1: and the mouth parts where the toothy ring, which had

706
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:20,319
Speaker 1: previously been identified as patoya. If you've never seen an

707
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:22,520
Speaker 1: image of Anomala carus. This is another thing to look

708
00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 1: up well, or maybe we'll try to include a picture

709
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:27,360
Speaker 1: on the landing. Yeah, we'll include a picture of this

710
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:29,719
Speaker 1: this creature, because it's just too it's too weird. If

711
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:33,160
Speaker 1: it need be, we will draw one and uploaded to

712
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:35,920
Speaker 1: the side. It's sort of like impossible to make yourself

713
00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 1: believe that this thing really existed on Earth. But I've

714
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:43,719
Speaker 1: seen the fossils now, and so the reason these disembodied

715
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 1: parts were originally misidentified was a common problem in paleontology.

716
00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:51,440
Speaker 1: As we've mentioned several times now, fossilization is strongly biased

717
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:55,920
Speaker 1: toward hard body parts like shells and bones. Anomala carus

718
00:40:55,960 --> 00:40:59,359
Speaker 1: did not have a hard exoskeleton covering its whole body,

719
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:02,759
Speaker 1: but probably had a very light kitanous outer layer like

720
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: a shrimp shell on some parts of its body, and

721
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:09,360
Speaker 1: when it died and decomposed, its body probably fell apart

722
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:12,879
Speaker 1: into different pieces, and not all of those pieces were

723
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 1: preserved at the same rate. So it's rare to find

724
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:19,920
Speaker 1: fossils that preserve any information about soft body parts, and

725
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 1: even rarer still to find soft bodies intact all in

726
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 1: one place. Rare, but not entirely impossible because since the

727
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:31,880
Speaker 1: original discovery of what amounted to Anomala cars is killing equipment,

728
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:36,800
Speaker 1: more fully preserved Anomala cars specimens have been discovered. For example,

729
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: one fossil discovered in nineteen two shows the spiked feeding

730
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 1: arms branching off of the head, within reach of the

731
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:47,880
Speaker 1: crushing mouth ring, and all contained within the imprint of

732
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:52,520
Speaker 1: this elongated soft body lined with lateral lobes that probably

733
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:56,080
Speaker 1: undulated to power swimming. So if you're trying to imagine

734
00:41:56,120 --> 00:41:58,359
Speaker 1: this thing right now, you have to picture a kind

735
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:04,879
Speaker 1: of wide, flat at lobed jellyfish snake undulating along through

736
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:08,200
Speaker 1: the ancient seas, with a gaping mouth ring on the

737
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:12,120
Speaker 1: underside that could squeeze with teeth but never fully close,

738
00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:15,040
Speaker 1: and then sticking out of its face a couple of

739
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:19,520
Speaker 1: hooked fang tentacles lined with spikes. Yeah this this looks

740
00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:23,359
Speaker 1: like a creature that belongs in a Star Wars cantina. Yeah. Yeah,

741
00:42:23,440 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 1: it should be like having a drink and telling you

742
00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: it doesn't like you, and it probably doesn't like you.

743
00:42:29,320 --> 00:42:31,879
Speaker 1: Now you you might be thinking, okay, so how big

744
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:35,120
Speaker 1: were these things? Right? Like? A few inches long? Parts

745
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:38,680
Speaker 1: found in fossil sites in China indicate that Anomalo carras

746
00:42:38,719 --> 00:42:42,400
Speaker 1: type organisms may have grown to almost two meters long,

747
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:46,600
Speaker 1: which is around six feet. You know, people do those

748
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 1: like booking a swim with the dolphins thing. I think

749
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:52,320
Speaker 1: people should book swim with the anomalo carras. They should

750
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:55,760
Speaker 1: use some kind of DNA engineering to bring these things back,

751
00:42:56,400 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 1: you know, and then have you swim with them at

752
00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:03,760
Speaker 1: the resort the per day shouldn't explosion hypothesis is correct? Especially,

753
00:43:03,760 --> 00:43:06,920
Speaker 1: I mean, this was eating other animals was a growth industry,

754
00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:09,880
Speaker 1: so it it does make sense that that the the

755
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:14,000
Speaker 1: successful model for eating other creatures would produce larger and

756
00:43:14,080 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 1: larger organisms, right yeah. So, but the question I guess

757
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:19,719
Speaker 1: is if these things are preying on the you know,

758
00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:23,400
Speaker 1: the widespread triobittes of the ancient seas, I don't know,

759
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:25,439
Speaker 1: would they take a bite out of you if they could.

760
00:43:26,239 --> 00:43:28,800
Speaker 1: So you're in the water with them. You obviously don't

761
00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:32,000
Speaker 1: look or smell like their normal prey. But then again,

762
00:43:32,080 --> 00:43:34,120
Speaker 1: they might just want to see what it tastes like.

763
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 1: It's hard to know. We kind of get into that

764
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:40,160
Speaker 1: whole shark and gorilla area. I don't know if I've

765
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 1: mentioned this on the podcast, but I don't think so well.

766
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 1: Every time I go to the ocean, I comfort myself

767
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:49,279
Speaker 1: regarding the risk or apparent risk of sharks and and

768
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: of course just shark media in general by thinking about

769
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 1: the just like a brief clip on The Simpsons where

770
00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: shark jumps out of the water and grabs a gorilla

771
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:02,160
Speaker 1: out of a tree, just ridiculous for several reasons, but

772
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 1: it drives home like this is this is something that

773
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:10,120
Speaker 1: does not happen, is not part of the the the

774
00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:13,680
Speaker 1: the the energy model for either species, you know, uh

775
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:15,560
Speaker 1: and and and that's essentially what I am. I am

776
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:17,799
Speaker 1: a gorilla in the water, and the shark has not

777
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:21,279
Speaker 1: evolved to eat me exclusively. It can if need be,

778
00:44:21,719 --> 00:44:23,920
Speaker 1: but it's not out there looking for gorillas. Right. It

779
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:26,879
Speaker 1: might have also, though, evolved a sort of like prey

780
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 1: diversity curiosity. It might take a little nibble on you

781
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:32,879
Speaker 1: to see what you're like, right, right, So I guess

782
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 1: that would be the main concern. But I'm guessing you

783
00:44:35,520 --> 00:44:38,080
Speaker 1: would have this element of surprise because, by the way,

784
00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:40,280
Speaker 1: I don't mean to be promoting like fear of sharks.

785
00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:43,839
Speaker 1: Obviously we're not their primary prey, right. But but I'm

786
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 1: guessing with with humans, if if we were to go

787
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 1: with our opening scenario and you were just dropped into

788
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: the waters among these things, I would hope you would

789
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: have this this element of surprise over them and they

790
00:44:55,600 --> 00:44:58,560
Speaker 1: would be a bit shocked and uncertain and hesitant to

791
00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 1: approach you. So another thing that's really cool about Anomala

792
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:06,680
Speaker 1: carres is that they have these amazing eyes. For a

793
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:10,839
Speaker 1: long time, detailed evidence of non biomineralized arthropod eyes had

794
00:45:10,840 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: been hard to find, but in two thousand eleven there

795
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:16,440
Speaker 1: was a letter to Nature that detailed this amazing find

796
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:19,799
Speaker 1: at the Emu Bay Shale of South Australia, and what

797
00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:23,839
Speaker 1: they had found was preserved Anomala carus eyes, and they

798
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:25,680
Speaker 1: found that they had a pair of two to three

799
00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:30,160
Speaker 1: centimeter eyes about five fifteen million years old, and they

800
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:33,920
Speaker 1: were compound eyes made of at least sixteen thousand hexagonally

801
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:37,520
Speaker 1: packed lenses, meaning these eyes would have been about as

802
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:42,280
Speaker 1: acute as the most powerful arthropod eyes today, like dragonfly eyes.

803
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:45,400
Speaker 1: And the authors think that this is uh that this

804
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:48,279
Speaker 1: evidence of acute vision lends support to the idea that

805
00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:53,479
Speaker 1: Anomala carreras was a powerful, fast moving apex predator going

806
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 1: all throughout the water column, which and this would have

807
00:45:56,120 --> 00:46:00,040
Speaker 1: accelerated the arms race that triggered Cambrian biodiversity and i

808
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:03,560
Speaker 1: O mineralization. You know, this also just makes me wonder, though,

809
00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: would a creature like this have anything to fear? Well,

810
00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:09,600
Speaker 1: I mean probably not. I mean if it's the apex

811
00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:12,359
Speaker 1: predator of an ancient ocean. What, it's the biggest thing

812
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 1: out there and it's got the most powerful killing equipment.

813
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:17,880
Speaker 1: What does it have to worry about? Nothing? Until you know,

814
00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 1: the time traveling human shows up and starts clubbing them.

815
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:22,879
Speaker 1: I guess that club they brought. You'd have to bring

816
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:25,560
Speaker 1: your own club. That's the key here. But nothing dead

817
00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:29,960
Speaker 1: will go. Ah, well, you know maybe it's still living.

818
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 1: Tree branch will work. Oh yeah, maybe that. Somebody should

819
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 1: have told kyleys about that. I guess that wouldn't have

820
00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:37,960
Speaker 1: been all that effective against the determinator. Yeah, where are

821
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:40,880
Speaker 1: they going to get a tree branch? And the desolate

822
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 1: post apocalypture? Okay, we're on a tangent here, so we're

823
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:48,719
Speaker 1: gonna look at some more uh Cambrian monsters. But one

824
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 1: more thing about Anomala carress before we move on, there

825
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:54,160
Speaker 1: is still a fascinating debate going on about how and

826
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 1: what Anomala carress ate. So some of these wounded trial

827
00:46:57,760 --> 00:47:00,800
Speaker 1: bytes that we discussed earlier have injuries. It really seemed

828
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:05,040
Speaker 1: to match the two pronged grasping appendages of the anomal

829
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:08,400
Speaker 1: caress and some experts believe that its mouth parts would

830
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 1: not have been powerful enough to prey upon TRIALO bytes

831
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:14,720
Speaker 1: with their hard outer shells. So that kind of creates

832
00:47:14,719 --> 00:47:19,000
Speaker 1: a question like what was was it eating something else?

833
00:47:19,560 --> 00:47:22,400
Speaker 1: Like how could it have gotten through these hard outer shells.

834
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 1: There are a few options. Maybe maybe they were just

835
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,920
Speaker 1: really beefy and they could crunch through those shells. Maybe

836
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:31,840
Speaker 1: they had some method of prying the shells off of

837
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:35,280
Speaker 1: weaker trialo bytes and sucking up all the soft parts inside.

838
00:47:35,840 --> 00:47:38,719
Speaker 1: Or there's also an interesting possibility I learned about from

839
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:41,680
Speaker 1: the guide on our hike, David. Maybe they took a

840
00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:45,000
Speaker 1: tip from the crab shack down the shore and they

841
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:48,239
Speaker 1: sought out soft shells trialo bytes who were in the

842
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 1: process of molting. So you you release your hard shell,

843
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:54,719
Speaker 1: put that aside to be fossilized for people to find

844
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:57,759
Speaker 1: millions of years later, and then you stay soft for

845
00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:00,960
Speaker 1: a little bit while you, you know, you grow. What

846
00:48:01,080 --> 00:48:04,040
Speaker 1: if they sought those out, the molten trial bytes and

847
00:48:04,280 --> 00:48:07,200
Speaker 1: nominoomb oh man, Yeah, I mean that could be. That

848
00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:10,960
Speaker 1: could be the very uh niche that they are exploiting.

849
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:13,600
Speaker 1: When you turn to the model of of of eating

850
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:17,400
Speaker 1: other creatures, what better time than the molting period. Okay,

851
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: So the trialo bytes and anomal carrass type creatures are

852
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:23,800
Speaker 1: some of the main players that we see in UH

853
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 1: in Cambrian evolution, but there are also all of these

854
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 1: fascinating bizarre periphery organisms. Like Robert, would you like to

855
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:34,600
Speaker 1: take us on a tour of the rest of the

856
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:38,759
Speaker 1: Cambrian monster house? Sure? Yeah, we have some wonderful UH

857
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:42,319
Speaker 1: specimens here to discuss here, and there's not there's not

858
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:45,400
Speaker 1: necessarily as much data behind all of them. I mean

859
00:48:45,400 --> 00:48:48,120
Speaker 1: there's data, but it's maybe not as as sexy as

860
00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:51,880
Speaker 1: such as a trilobyte. However, they still have some some

861
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:54,920
Speaker 1: fascinating features, and I think many of them would make

862
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:57,880
Speaker 1: excellent Halloween costomes. I would say they're much sexier than

863
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:00,360
Speaker 1: the trial byte, maybe just not as a robust step.

864
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:03,759
Speaker 1: So the first one here I want to discuss is

865
00:49:04,080 --> 00:49:09,560
Speaker 1: um opabinia. I've often called the stock eyed vacuum cinabite.

866
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:13,040
Speaker 1: That's a good description one that I think evokes the

867
00:49:13,600 --> 00:49:17,200
Speaker 1: alien qualities of this creature. So if you're not looking

868
00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 1: at a picture of this right now and stuff to

869
00:49:18,920 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 1: blow your mind dot com, I want you to imagine

870
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:23,920
Speaker 1: something like a shrimp or a lobster, but with rows

871
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:27,759
Speaker 1: of side lobes along its sides, paddling along like the

872
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:31,600
Speaker 1: ores of a like a galley spiking ship. You's got

873
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:33,840
Speaker 1: these lobes on the sides, kind of like we described,

874
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:38,000
Speaker 1: with anomalocras that undulate to move it along throughout the water. Right.

875
00:49:38,719 --> 00:49:40,880
Speaker 1: And you know, it is not that remarkable at the

876
00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:42,640
Speaker 1: the end, Like I said, if you were just catching

877
00:49:42,640 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: it a glimpse of it out of the corner of

878
00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:47,440
Speaker 1: your eye, that the back portion doesn't look that different

879
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:50,279
Speaker 1: from again, like a lobster or shrimp or something. But

880
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:53,480
Speaker 1: it's the front end of the creature that is is

881
00:49:53,560 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 1: rather interesting because it has a long, flexible proboscis tipped

882
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:01,640
Speaker 1: with grasping spines, and the creature itself was about three

883
00:50:01,640 --> 00:50:06,080
Speaker 1: inches long, not counting this uh weird cool richie tentacle. Yeah.

884
00:50:06,200 --> 00:50:10,920
Speaker 1: Five eyes to right, five eyes on stalks. Yes, five eyes,

885
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 1: just standing right at you on stalks like they put

886
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 1: them on stalks. It's like just a mess with us. Yeah,

887
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:21,360
Speaker 1: and I think this all sounds very love crafty and

888
00:50:21,400 --> 00:50:24,920
Speaker 1: but but according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History,

889
00:50:25,480 --> 00:50:29,759
Speaker 1: a reconstructed image of the creature resulted in laughter at

890
00:50:29,760 --> 00:50:32,479
Speaker 1: a nineteen seventy two scientific meetings. So instead of looking

891
00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:36,080
Speaker 1: at this thing and thinking, oh, this sounds horrific, it's like,

892
00:50:36,120 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: got this reaching arm that you know is up to

893
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:41,120
Speaker 1: no good with its spikes on the end. But yeah,

894
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: apparently when it was first presented, uh, other other scientists

895
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 1: laughed at the prospect of something this ridiculous looking. So

896
00:50:49,239 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 1: you have to think, so, it's got this reaching appendage

897
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:54,320
Speaker 1: that's sort of like its mouth appendage thing, So what's

898
00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:56,680
Speaker 1: sort of like maybe sort of like an ant eater,

899
00:50:57,440 --> 00:51:00,200
Speaker 1: I guess, but it's obviously not a vertebr at, not

900
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 1: a mammal. Yeah, it was. The idea here is that

901
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 1: this would have haunted the soft sea bed and it

902
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:09,319
Speaker 1: would would have reached into sand burrows with this, so

903
00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:16,439
Speaker 1: this spiked terminating wriggly arm to grab delicious worms and

904
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 1: uh and actually have a quote here. This is from HB.

905
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:26,040
Speaker 1: Whittington from the enigmatic animal Opabinia regalis Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale,

906
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 1: British Columbia. This was presented the Royal Society b quote.

907
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:34,959
Speaker 1: Opabinia regalius may have plowed shallowly in the bottom mud,

908
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:38,839
Speaker 1: propelled by movement of the lateral lobes. The eyes are

909
00:51:38,880 --> 00:51:41,759
Speaker 1: presumed to have been capable of detecting movements in the

910
00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: surrounding waters, and the frontal process to have been used

911
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:47,759
Speaker 1: to explore the mud for food and bring it to

912
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:52,520
Speaker 1: the backward facing mouth. The frontal process. That is the

913
00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:57,239
Speaker 1: most amazing euphemistic term for killing equipment. And then they

914
00:51:57,239 --> 00:52:00,440
Speaker 1: put the frontal process through the thorax the way that

915
00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:03,319
Speaker 1: my son Uh describes it with the animals when he's

916
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:05,759
Speaker 1: like drawing dinosaurs. He says that this is the part

917
00:52:05,840 --> 00:52:11,800
Speaker 1: that makes the animal's eyes close and then die. Yeah,

918
00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 1: so you know, the frontal process is the part that

919
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:19,279
Speaker 1: makes the trial by its eyes closed. So this is

920
00:52:19,280 --> 00:52:21,920
Speaker 1: a this is a cool specimen. It's it's unique, it's enigmatic,

921
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:24,479
Speaker 1: it's silly looking, but it's also you have to admit,

922
00:52:24,520 --> 00:52:27,400
Speaker 1: a very sensible organism when you really think about it

923
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:30,719
Speaker 1: um it's it needs something to grab those worms. It

924
00:52:30,760 --> 00:52:34,839
Speaker 1: has a single you know, grabber to do it. Now.

925
00:52:35,040 --> 00:52:38,880
Speaker 1: It's It's also interesting that this one remains unassigned to

926
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:43,799
Speaker 1: any other extinct or currently living major group. That there

927
00:52:43,840 --> 00:52:45,560
Speaker 1: are some theories, but for the most part, this is

928
00:52:45,600 --> 00:52:49,359
Speaker 1: one of those um, you know, abandoned prototypes you can

929
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:52,120
Speaker 1: think of. You know, there's there there's nothing out there

930
00:52:52,160 --> 00:52:55,239
Speaker 1: that that we know of that is a descendant of

931
00:52:55,280 --> 00:52:58,880
Speaker 1: this thing. That's interesting because when I think about organisms

932
00:52:58,920 --> 00:53:03,800
Speaker 1: like this, I think about the relationship between manipulation limbs

933
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:08,080
Speaker 1: and the evolution of intelligence. I mean, there's one way

934
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:11,520
Speaker 1: of looking at the evolution of hominid intelligence, and it's

935
00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:14,080
Speaker 1: to say that, Okay, one thing that may have driven

936
00:53:15,239 --> 00:53:17,880
Speaker 1: humans and other you know, great apes to have larger

937
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:22,000
Speaker 1: brains and more intellectual power than the average mammal is

938
00:53:22,080 --> 00:53:24,799
Speaker 1: that they've got free limbs that they don't always have

939
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:28,840
Speaker 1: to use for walking and stuff like that to manipulate objects,

940
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 1: and that the manipulation of objects allowed them to you know,

941
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:37,040
Speaker 1: have advantages in the manipulation of tools and stuff like that. Yeah,

942
00:53:37,719 --> 00:53:39,839
Speaker 1: you can't help but imagine like what if this had

943
00:53:39,840 --> 00:53:44,840
Speaker 1: been the successful uh limb of of of evolutionary ascension,

944
00:53:44,920 --> 00:53:47,440
Speaker 1: and that ended up with all of these different like

945
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:51,600
Speaker 1: monolimbed creatures, you know, plowing about in the seas, climbing

946
00:53:51,680 --> 00:53:53,560
Speaker 1: up onto land and maybe getting to the point where

947
00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:56,800
Speaker 1: they're using that that one spiky tentacle to to type

948
00:53:56,840 --> 00:54:00,840
Speaker 1: on computer keyboards. Yeah, yeah, you see it in octopi to,

949
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:03,759
Speaker 1: you know, having these free, these free limbs that they

950
00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:07,040
Speaker 1: can manipulate things with. I wonder could Opabinia, if it

951
00:54:07,080 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: hadn't gone extinct yet, could it have become the tool

952
00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:14,480
Speaker 1: using creature before there were even mammals. But instead it

953
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:17,600
Speaker 1: just remains this this weird dead end that looks it

954
00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:20,080
Speaker 1: looks like if you decided to make an animal out

955
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:23,920
Speaker 1: of random Lego pieces and he stuck that. I think

956
00:54:23,960 --> 00:54:27,320
Speaker 1: they still have that, that sort of twisty grabber mechanism

957
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:31,400
Speaker 1: and the Lego kids today. Alright, the next creature on

958
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:36,480
Speaker 1: our list here is the Hallucigenia. Hallucigenia well named yeh,

959
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:38,759
Speaker 1: it almost doesn't need a cool nickname, but I know

960
00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:41,440
Speaker 1: you have one thought up already. How about the creeping

961
00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 1: headless spike worm. Yes, yeah, that's because it works because

962
00:54:47,600 --> 00:54:50,920
Speaker 1: we're essentially looking at a tube of flesh with two

963
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:54,440
Speaker 1: rows of spines on one side and one row of

964
00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:59,160
Speaker 1: mouth tipped tentacles on the other. And on either end,

965
00:54:59,239 --> 00:55:03,080
Speaker 1: if we're keep in mind here we're working from the fossils.

966
00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:05,200
Speaker 1: Here on either end there's kind of a dark stain.

967
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:09,239
Speaker 1: Presumably one of them is the head. And presumably the

968
00:55:09,320 --> 00:55:11,520
Speaker 1: idea here is that, at least the early ideas that

969
00:55:11,560 --> 00:55:14,239
Speaker 1: it walked about on those spines and it waved its

970
00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:17,760
Speaker 1: tentacles above it. Uh so you had this still walking

971
00:55:17,840 --> 00:55:23,280
Speaker 1: tentacle waiver something with no modern analogy, no modern analogy.

972
00:55:23,400 --> 00:55:25,440
Speaker 1: It looks like something that you would see illustrated in

973
00:55:25,440 --> 00:55:30,360
Speaker 1: a Wayne Barlow alien book. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, or like

974
00:55:30,520 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 1: something um, I don't know. It looks kind of like

975
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:35,759
Speaker 1: one of those blobs that sometimes shows up in a

976
00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:38,360
Speaker 1: Gary Larson cartoon and he's just trying to create a

977
00:55:38,400 --> 00:55:41,080
Speaker 1: weird alien shape. Yeah. I mean, it looks like something

978
00:55:41,080 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 1: that would come out of a dream. Thus its name.

979
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:46,000
Speaker 1: You know, it looks it's hallucigenia. It's something that is

980
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 1: that that seems like a fever dream of brought to

981
00:55:49,600 --> 00:55:52,160
Speaker 1: life in a fossil. Now. I think this was first

982
00:55:52,640 --> 00:55:56,520
Speaker 1: first put together by paleontologists in the seventies, right right,

983
00:55:56,760 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 1: and then they had there was a subsequent find from

984
00:55:59,719 --> 00:56:02,239
Speaker 1: Chi I know that showed a similar creature with a

985
00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 1: second row of tentacles tipped with claws, and then they realized, oh,

986
00:56:06,800 --> 00:56:09,279
Speaker 1: we have it upside down. The creature walked on the

987
00:56:09,320 --> 00:56:14,040
Speaker 1: tentacles and the spikes provided an upward facing protective array.

988
00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:16,680
Speaker 1: So that's a lot. I mean, it's still a weird

989
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:18,879
Speaker 1: looking critter, don't get me wrong, but that's a lot

990
00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:20,799
Speaker 1: more in keeping us what we might expect. You know,

991
00:56:20,880 --> 00:56:23,919
Speaker 1: that's not that different from say, a turtle with legs

992
00:56:24,000 --> 00:56:27,120
Speaker 1: on the bottom and the protective display on top, or

993
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:30,680
Speaker 1: any you know, various examples from the invertebrate world. I

994
00:56:30,680 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 1: don't know, is that less weird? I'm trying to think. Okay,

995
00:56:33,719 --> 00:56:36,799
Speaker 1: so it's it's like a worm and it's got these

996
00:56:36,840 --> 00:56:39,799
Speaker 1: long tentacles with mouths on them that it walks on. Yeah,

997
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:43,200
Speaker 1: I mean, it's still weird, and it's got spikes sticking up. Okay, Yeah,

998
00:56:43,239 --> 00:56:46,120
Speaker 1: I guess a little less weird than walking on the spikes. Yeah,

999
00:56:46,239 --> 00:56:48,640
Speaker 1: I guess. It's kind of a fun experiment you can

1000
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:52,319
Speaker 1: play anytime you see like a crazy alien illustration. Try

1001
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:54,640
Speaker 1: to decide is it more alien if you turn it

1002
00:56:54,719 --> 00:56:58,839
Speaker 1: upside down? Uh? Because yeah, you can either improve upon

1003
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:00,880
Speaker 1: the design or figure about how they came up with

1004
00:57:00,920 --> 00:57:05,600
Speaker 1: it to again with maybe. Alright, so let's talk about

1005
00:57:05,600 --> 00:57:07,640
Speaker 1: it a little bit bit more here. So, University of

1006
00:57:07,719 --> 00:57:12,480
Speaker 1: Durham invertebrate paleontologist Martin R. Smith, who was an interesting

1007
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:15,360
Speaker 1: chap He has a nice online presence. He placed the

1008
00:57:15,640 --> 00:57:18,720
Speaker 1: fossil of one of these creatures in an electron microscope

1009
00:57:18,720 --> 00:57:20,760
Speaker 1: in an attempt to, you know, figure out more about it.

1010
00:57:21,120 --> 00:57:24,640
Speaker 1: And one of the pressing questions was name, like, which

1011
00:57:24,760 --> 00:57:27,200
Speaker 1: which end is the head and which one is the anus? Well, yeah,

1012
00:57:27,240 --> 00:57:29,120
Speaker 1: I mean that that's sort of. I knew there was

1013
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:31,680
Speaker 1: some problem with locating its head, and that comes through

1014
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:35,160
Speaker 1: in my name nomenclature of it, the headless spike worm.

1015
00:57:35,320 --> 00:57:38,120
Speaker 1: Now I mentioned the stains earlier, right, like, basically from

1016
00:57:38,120 --> 00:57:39,840
Speaker 1: the fossils we knew we knew that there was like

1017
00:57:39,880 --> 00:57:41,880
Speaker 1: a big stain on one end and a smaller stain

1018
00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:44,560
Speaker 1: on the other, and one was presumably the head. So

1019
00:57:44,640 --> 00:57:47,600
Speaker 1: the larger stain was was for a long time interpreted

1020
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:50,920
Speaker 1: as a balloon like head on this creature. But it

1021
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:53,520
Speaker 1: turns out it was very much a stain. It was

1022
00:57:53,680 --> 00:57:57,280
Speaker 1: the quote decay fluids that had been squeezed out of

1023
00:57:57,400 --> 00:58:00,320
Speaker 1: one end of the guts of the organism grows. Yeah,

1024
00:58:00,320 --> 00:58:01,920
Speaker 1: so this was the anus in the head was on

1025
00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:05,320
Speaker 1: the other side. And when they looked to the head,

1026
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:09,200
Speaker 1: you know what, they found hockey mask. Close they found

1027
00:58:09,240 --> 00:58:13,320
Speaker 1: a smiley face. Yeah, a pair of eyes with a

1028
00:58:13,520 --> 00:58:16,960
Speaker 1: semicircular grin. Uh. And it so it was sort of

1029
00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:18,560
Speaker 1: like a they say, it was sort of like a

1030
00:58:18,600 --> 00:58:21,880
Speaker 1: caterpillar looking creature. Yeah. Now when I say smiley face,

1031
00:58:21,960 --> 00:58:24,480
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of abstract. I'm looking at an image

1032
00:58:24,520 --> 00:58:26,840
Speaker 1: of it here. But but we can't help but look

1033
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:30,160
Speaker 1: at it with our with our human failings and say, oh,

1034
00:58:30,160 --> 00:58:36,720
Speaker 1: well that's a smiley face. Oh hallucigenia, you devil you. Yeah.

1035
00:58:36,760 --> 00:58:39,960
Speaker 1: So hallucigenia is a fun one for sure. Stealing my heart.

1036
00:58:40,560 --> 00:58:43,280
Speaker 1: Take me somewhere even weirder, Robert, All right, well the

1037
00:58:43,320 --> 00:58:47,760
Speaker 1: next one is will Waxia, and uh, I believe you

1038
00:58:48,200 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 1: did you? Did you come up with a name for

1039
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:52,720
Speaker 1: this one or did I? Okay, I think I actually

1040
00:58:52,840 --> 00:58:54,600
Speaker 1: came up with a few different ones here. So it

1041
00:58:54,640 --> 00:58:58,000
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a prehistoric iron maiden. It also

1042
00:58:58,040 --> 00:59:01,560
Speaker 1: looks like an organic battle holm or perhaps a grim

1043
00:59:01,640 --> 00:59:07,000
Speaker 1: dark Pokemon, and it provides another splash of of the

1044
00:59:07,040 --> 00:59:11,400
Speaker 1: bizarre to the Cambrian seas. So two rows of long

1045
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:15,800
Speaker 1: spines and a kind of plate mail armor of leaf

1046
00:59:15,880 --> 00:59:19,600
Speaker 1: shaped ribbed plates again on something that looks like a hat.

1047
00:59:20,040 --> 00:59:23,439
Speaker 1: It it looks like a spiked hat like plate mail

1048
00:59:23,600 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 1: kind of scenario. I can't stress the armor analogy enough.

1049
00:59:27,320 --> 00:59:29,720
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a half of a walnut with

1050
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:32,960
Speaker 1: with plate mail on it and knives sticking out. Yeah,

1051
00:59:33,040 --> 00:59:35,320
Speaker 1: it looks like something an orc would wear on its head.

1052
00:59:37,720 --> 00:59:40,560
Speaker 1: And uh, A lot of the fossils here are essentially

1053
00:59:40,600 --> 00:59:43,080
Speaker 1: that we have of this thing are essentially flattened remains

1054
00:59:43,160 --> 00:59:46,040
Speaker 1: of this natural armor, because again it's the hard parts

1055
00:59:46,040 --> 00:59:48,680
Speaker 1: that were left with and we just have to try

1056
00:59:48,760 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 1: and interpret what the soft tissue would have consisted of.

1057
00:59:51,840 --> 00:59:54,800
Speaker 1: And there are different interpretations here. Now Martin Smith, who

1058
00:59:54,840 --> 00:59:58,920
Speaker 1: I just mentioned earlier, he favors the mollus interpretation. He

1059
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:02,280
Speaker 1: says that their mouth, which would have been a radula

1060
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:05,440
Speaker 1: bearing two rows of teeth, have several similarities with the

1061
01:00:05,480 --> 01:00:08,640
Speaker 1: teeth of modern mollus and uh and and they look

1062
01:00:08,720 --> 01:00:11,880
Speaker 1: nothing like worm teeth, because that's the other argument is

1063
01:00:11,920 --> 01:00:16,680
Speaker 1: that these are essentially worm creatures. Specifically they would be

1064
01:00:16,760 --> 01:00:22,360
Speaker 1: bristle worms. But that's more of a controversial interpretation. So

1065
01:00:22,440 --> 01:00:25,040
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of depth for that particular organism

1066
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:27,920
Speaker 1: other than it just looks really strange. And when you

1067
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:31,840
Speaker 1: when you see illustrations of the Cambrian sea, you will

1068
01:00:31,880 --> 01:00:33,760
Speaker 1: often find it'll get it will get in there somewhere.

1069
01:00:33,760 --> 01:00:36,920
Speaker 1: It won't be the central organism, but it will it

1070
01:00:36,960 --> 01:00:40,400
Speaker 1: will have a place in the in the in the illustration.

1071
01:00:41,000 --> 01:00:45,320
Speaker 1: Now I've got a question around among this ancient Cambrian

1072
01:00:45,640 --> 01:00:49,160
Speaker 1: monster house, this sea full of bizarre alien creatures, we

1073
01:00:49,200 --> 01:00:53,400
Speaker 1: have to imagine that modern day life forms can trace

1074
01:00:53,480 --> 01:00:58,200
Speaker 1: their roots back to organisms that inhabited these oceans, especially

1075
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:03,000
Speaker 1: when you think about very successful, whole modern philo like vertebrates. Yeah,

1076
01:01:03,000 --> 01:01:05,760
Speaker 1: because the whole idea here is not that like everything

1077
01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:09,480
Speaker 1: dies often and and life begins a new Uh, that

1078
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:13,800
Speaker 1: some of these models would would have descendants alive today,

1079
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:17,560
Speaker 1: I'll be you know, rather different to organisms. And we

1080
01:01:17,640 --> 01:01:20,160
Speaker 1: have just such a case with Pekaia. Though it's a

1081
01:01:20,200 --> 01:01:24,000
Speaker 1: controversial example, right, yes, yeah, that this is not this

1082
01:01:24,080 --> 01:01:27,880
Speaker 1: is not set in stone that the fossils, of course are. Um. Yeah,

1083
01:01:27,920 --> 01:01:31,160
Speaker 1: you you referred to this as the ancestor fish slug

1084
01:01:31,400 --> 01:01:36,240
Speaker 1: or potential potential ancestor. So if you're not looking at

1085
01:01:36,280 --> 01:01:39,200
Speaker 1: an image of this creature, imagine a c slug that

1086
01:01:39,440 --> 01:01:42,800
Speaker 1: swims like a modern fish, and you've got a clear

1087
01:01:42,960 --> 01:01:46,560
Speaker 1: vision of Pecaia, or at least a clear vision as anyone.

1088
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:49,880
Speaker 1: The crazy thing about it is that that scientists point

1089
01:01:49,920 --> 01:01:52,840
Speaker 1: to its not a chord, a precursor to the spinal cord,

1090
01:01:53,200 --> 01:01:56,160
Speaker 1: and also a key aspect of this creature's swimming mechanics

1091
01:01:56,480 --> 01:01:59,360
Speaker 1: as a reason that it could just be an ancestor

1092
01:01:59,400 --> 01:02:03,680
Speaker 1: of all to bruts, including humans. But we're also throwing

1093
01:02:03,720 --> 01:02:05,840
Speaker 1: a curve in all this because it has a two

1094
01:02:05,920 --> 01:02:08,840
Speaker 1: lobed head that doesn't sound like any vertebrates I've ever

1095
01:02:08,880 --> 01:02:12,040
Speaker 1: heard of. Yeah, scientists remain split on this now. A

1096
01:02:12,480 --> 01:02:16,640
Speaker 1: nineteen discovery of a primitive fish in the Lower Cambrian

1097
01:02:16,960 --> 01:02:20,160
Speaker 1: also suggests that it in Pecaya had an even more

1098
01:02:20,240 --> 01:02:23,440
Speaker 1: ancient common ancestor. Okay, so it might be that this

1099
01:02:23,480 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: thing wasn't a direct ancestor of existing vertebrates, but that

1100
01:02:27,680 --> 01:02:30,640
Speaker 1: it might have been an offshoot of whatever was a

1101
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:34,320
Speaker 1: direct ancestor of living vertebrates. And I think it will

1102
01:02:34,360 --> 01:02:36,760
Speaker 1: make a great Halloween costume for anyone out there who's

1103
01:02:37,040 --> 01:02:41,080
Speaker 1: who's not sold on the previous specimens. Grandma fish slug. Yeah, yeah,

1104
01:02:41,120 --> 01:02:43,240
Speaker 1: I mean I can just imagine it moving like you

1105
01:02:44,040 --> 01:02:47,560
Speaker 1: you get used to seeing footage of sea slugs and uh,

1106
01:02:47,920 --> 01:02:50,120
Speaker 1: similar creatures and the way they move, but this would

1107
01:02:50,120 --> 01:02:53,200
Speaker 1: have moved if I'm if I'm reading it correctly, more

1108
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:55,720
Speaker 1: more like a fish, more like an eel. So imagine

1109
01:02:55,760 --> 01:02:59,080
Speaker 1: like an eagle slug, and that's what you have here, totally.

1110
01:02:59,160 --> 01:03:01,320
Speaker 1: Now there's one more. I thought it would be good

1111
01:03:01,360 --> 01:03:04,560
Speaker 1: to mention because it's got a slightly love crafty in face, right,

1112
01:03:05,160 --> 01:03:09,520
Speaker 1: Leon Coylia the blind whip Hunter. Yes, it looks kind

1113
01:03:09,520 --> 01:03:11,880
Speaker 1: of This one's kind of hard to explain really, but

1114
01:03:12,360 --> 01:03:15,080
Speaker 1: you know, it looks shrimpy, looks a little flea like.

1115
01:03:15,800 --> 01:03:19,479
Speaker 1: But imagine a blind monster that stumbles around in the murk,

1116
01:03:19,640 --> 01:03:24,040
Speaker 1: just bull whipping everything is vicinity with flails and then

1117
01:03:24,200 --> 01:03:27,400
Speaker 1: just really whipping the heck out of potential prey. So

1118
01:03:27,520 --> 01:03:30,360
Speaker 1: whips coming out of its face. Yes, and that's what

1119
01:03:30,400 --> 01:03:33,000
Speaker 1: we have with leon Colia. Now we assume it was

1120
01:03:33,080 --> 01:03:36,400
Speaker 1: blind because we haven't found evidence of IY stalks yet,

1121
01:03:36,760 --> 01:03:39,120
Speaker 1: which if in the thing, of course, is that given

1122
01:03:39,160 --> 01:03:43,360
Speaker 1: these previous examples, it's entirely likely that that that could occur.

1123
01:03:43,640 --> 01:03:46,960
Speaker 1: At some point a future fossil find will reveal, oh, well,

1124
01:03:47,000 --> 01:03:48,800
Speaker 1: they did have eye structures and they look like this,

1125
01:03:49,400 --> 01:03:52,640
Speaker 1: but for the time being, the ideas that they were

1126
01:03:52,760 --> 01:03:56,920
Speaker 1: seemingly blind. The creature here was about two inches long,

1127
01:03:57,280 --> 01:04:00,439
Speaker 1: and it's usually classified as in as in our prode,

1128
01:04:00,520 --> 01:04:05,840
Speaker 1: though sometimes it's thrown into the arachnomorph subgroups, which would

1129
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:10,560
Speaker 1: connect it, you know, more to scorpions and trilobytes. But

1130
01:04:10,600 --> 01:04:13,280
Speaker 1: still it's a fascinating creature to try and imagine, especially

1131
01:04:13,280 --> 01:04:17,320
Speaker 1: in this this changing time where eyesight is coming online

1132
01:04:17,360 --> 01:04:22,080
Speaker 1: for various organisms and new new methods of exploiting other

1133
01:04:22,240 --> 01:04:25,480
Speaker 1: organisms are becoming possible, and this one is just whipping

1134
01:04:25,480 --> 01:04:29,320
Speaker 1: things with its face. I felt I can eat something. Yeah,

1135
01:04:29,440 --> 01:04:31,520
Speaker 1: So I guess that's going to have to conclude our

1136
01:04:31,600 --> 01:04:34,800
Speaker 1: tour of the Cambrian monsters. But I do want to

1137
01:04:34,800 --> 01:04:38,560
Speaker 1: ask you, Robert, so clearly we have not exhausted all

1138
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:42,440
Speaker 1: of the fascinating questions about the Cambrian period and the

1139
01:04:42,440 --> 01:04:48,040
Speaker 1: the emergence of biodiversity, animal biodiversity, especially in the Cambrian periods.

1140
01:04:48,120 --> 01:04:51,760
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you which of the Cambrian

1141
01:04:51,840 --> 01:04:55,040
Speaker 1: explosion theories we've discussed today appeals to you the most.

1142
01:04:55,080 --> 01:04:57,520
Speaker 1: Obviously we haven't covered all of the possibilities. There are

1143
01:04:57,520 --> 01:05:01,680
Speaker 1: other possible explanations out there. But what what? What What strikes

1144
01:05:01,720 --> 01:05:04,560
Speaker 1: true to you? Like? What sounds right? Does it? Could

1145
01:05:04,560 --> 01:05:07,480
Speaker 1: it have been cite as the thing that triggered all

1146
01:05:07,520 --> 01:05:11,960
Speaker 1: of this biodiversity, or the innovation of predation and carnivary,

1147
01:05:12,120 --> 01:05:16,200
Speaker 1: or the chemistry for biomineralization, or is it just this

1148
01:05:16,320 --> 01:05:19,760
Speaker 1: sampling bias where you know, maybe that there isn't as

1149
01:05:19,840 --> 01:05:22,440
Speaker 1: much bio innovation in this period as it seems just

1150
01:05:22,520 --> 01:05:24,240
Speaker 1: from the fossil record. I mean, I guess I could

1151
01:05:24,240 --> 01:05:25,840
Speaker 1: play it safe and say a little bit of all

1152
01:05:25,880 --> 01:05:29,680
Speaker 1: of those, But but I guess I tend to buy

1153
01:05:29,760 --> 01:05:35,120
Speaker 1: more into the predation and and cite arguments, with some

1154
01:05:35,160 --> 01:05:38,000
Speaker 1: support by by by some of the additional arguments. But

1155
01:05:38,000 --> 01:05:40,680
Speaker 1: but those are the two that I guess I feel

1156
01:05:40,720 --> 01:05:43,400
Speaker 1: like they have the most meat for me. But then again,

1157
01:05:43,440 --> 01:05:47,840
Speaker 1: I'm not a I'm not a scientist, you know, specializing

1158
01:05:47,880 --> 01:05:50,240
Speaker 1: in this time period, but but those are the ones

1159
01:05:50,280 --> 01:05:51,920
Speaker 1: that I feel like are the most Maybe it's just

1160
01:05:51,960 --> 01:05:54,280
Speaker 1: calling to the five year old in me. The it's

1161
01:05:54,320 --> 01:05:58,439
Speaker 1: the it's the explanation and involves creatures warring with each

1162
01:05:58,480 --> 01:06:00,640
Speaker 1: other and battling each other and there for that's the

1163
01:06:00,640 --> 01:06:03,440
Speaker 1: one that I can imagine. Yeah, it's hard to resist now,

1164
01:06:03,480 --> 01:06:06,120
Speaker 1: I know, I've I think I read at some point

1165
01:06:06,160 --> 01:06:10,320
Speaker 1: that one of the arguments against the site hypothesis is

1166
01:06:10,400 --> 01:06:14,400
Speaker 1: just that site doesn't generally matter in the water and

1167
01:06:14,520 --> 01:06:17,080
Speaker 1: especially in the deep water, as much as it does

1168
01:06:17,240 --> 01:06:19,520
Speaker 1: on land. And not that it doesn't matter at all,

1169
01:06:19,640 --> 01:06:22,560
Speaker 1: it does, but that you know, things like smell and

1170
01:06:22,680 --> 01:06:25,360
Speaker 1: hearing and stuff like that are more useful in the ocean.

1171
01:06:25,400 --> 01:06:27,680
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know, I'm not sure which I'm

1172
01:06:27,920 --> 01:06:32,320
Speaker 1: most convinced by. The predation one seems very interesting to

1173
01:06:32,360 --> 01:06:36,880
Speaker 1: me that if animals weren't really capitalizing on getting their

1174
01:06:37,000 --> 01:06:41,080
Speaker 1: energy from other more large sized animals before and suddenly

1175
01:06:41,160 --> 01:06:43,120
Speaker 1: they started doing that, that that could be you know,

1176
01:06:43,160 --> 01:06:46,320
Speaker 1: a game changer. It's also kind of an original sin

1177
01:06:46,480 --> 01:06:49,720
Speaker 1: type scenario too. It feels very mythic, right, like that

1178
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:52,680
Speaker 1: that the first creature to figure out that it can

1179
01:06:52,800 --> 01:06:55,440
Speaker 1: it can prey on its fellow organisms. And how does

1180
01:06:55,480 --> 01:06:58,320
Speaker 1: that occur? Like obviously it's it's not just a situation

1181
01:06:58,360 --> 01:07:02,080
Speaker 1: of one day, uh this this creature just takes a

1182
01:07:02,080 --> 01:07:03,880
Speaker 1: bite out of another one, Like it's going to be

1183
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:07,080
Speaker 1: a more gradual process and uh, you know, and and

1184
01:07:07,280 --> 01:07:11,080
Speaker 1: likely begins with some sort of gray area of competition

1185
01:07:11,120 --> 01:07:15,000
Speaker 1: for food, like for instance, a creature it becomes adept

1186
01:07:15,040 --> 01:07:18,360
Speaker 1: at stealing food from either maybe stealing food from its mouth.

1187
01:07:18,640 --> 01:07:22,080
Speaker 1: And what happens if you steal food from another creature's belly? Yeah, yeah,

1188
01:07:22,120 --> 01:07:24,320
Speaker 1: you know, I mean that that is the difficulty of

1189
01:07:25,000 --> 01:07:28,320
Speaker 1: this hypothesis is you have to imagine what's the process

1190
01:07:28,400 --> 01:07:32,000
Speaker 1: that gets you there by gradual evolutionary change, Even if

1191
01:07:32,000 --> 01:07:34,760
Speaker 1: it's geologically rapid, it still would have been gradual in

1192
01:07:34,840 --> 01:07:38,560
Speaker 1: biological terms. Um, trying to you know, go from an

1193
01:07:38,640 --> 01:07:42,840
Speaker 1: organism organisms that are all basically vegetarian to some organisms

1194
01:07:42,840 --> 01:07:46,520
Speaker 1: eating other animals. Yeah yeah, Like another example that comes

1195
01:07:46,520 --> 01:07:49,440
Speaker 1: to mind is, of course animals that will consume their

1196
01:07:49,480 --> 01:07:52,440
Speaker 1: own young or their own eggs. We've talked about, you know,

1197
01:07:52,800 --> 01:07:58,600
Speaker 1: the parental cannibalism. To sort of reabsorb essentially lost energy,

1198
01:07:58,840 --> 01:08:02,000
Speaker 1: and how that could seemingly be an avenue into the

1199
01:08:03,160 --> 01:08:07,800
Speaker 1: into interpredation, because if you're absorbing your own biomatter back

1200
01:08:07,840 --> 01:08:11,640
Speaker 1: into yourself, then it becomes less of elite to absorb

1201
01:08:11,680 --> 01:08:14,520
Speaker 1: the biomatter of another. I can also see a scavenging

1202
01:08:14,640 --> 01:08:19,679
Speaker 1: to predation route that maybe, uh, the the gradual changes

1203
01:08:19,760 --> 01:08:23,479
Speaker 1: that allow you to better and better extracts nutrition from

1204
01:08:23,640 --> 01:08:25,840
Speaker 1: dead animals that you find on the bottom of the

1205
01:08:25,880 --> 01:08:30,240
Speaker 1: ocean could eventually become useful in killing live animals right right.

1206
01:08:30,520 --> 01:08:33,280
Speaker 1: Or you could just always do it and an angel

1207
01:08:33,320 --> 01:08:37,320
Speaker 1: told you not to until a snake suggested otherwise, just

1208
01:08:37,400 --> 01:08:40,280
Speaker 1: another possibility that could be it. Well, Robert, I don't

1209
01:08:40,600 --> 01:08:42,360
Speaker 1: I don't get the feeling that we're done with the

1210
01:08:42,400 --> 01:08:44,600
Speaker 1: Cambrian period. I think we may come back here in

1211
01:08:44,600 --> 01:08:47,680
Speaker 1: the future to explore some other scientific issues and when

1212
01:08:47,760 --> 01:08:49,679
Speaker 1: there may be other things to discuss with the burdge

1213
01:08:49,680 --> 01:08:52,280
Speaker 1: of shale as well. Yeah, and and in general, I'd

1214
01:08:52,280 --> 01:08:55,320
Speaker 1: love to do some more episodes in the future regarding

1215
01:08:55,360 --> 01:08:57,479
Speaker 1: prehistoric creatures. I feel like this is something we come

1216
01:08:57,520 --> 01:09:00,320
Speaker 1: back to time and time again. Well, I at least

1217
01:09:00,320 --> 01:09:03,960
Speaker 1: on what a bi monthly uh, kind of pattern, I

1218
01:09:04,000 --> 01:09:05,840
Speaker 1: guess so, I mean it's it's the seven year old

1219
01:09:05,840 --> 01:09:08,479
Speaker 1: in me. I've I've never gotten over how much I

1220
01:09:08,520 --> 01:09:12,040
Speaker 1: love dinosaurs and other weird organisms that don't exist today.

1221
01:09:12,120 --> 01:09:14,599
Speaker 1: It's it's part of my love for monsters, and it's

1222
01:09:14,680 --> 01:09:18,840
Speaker 1: part of what keeps bringing me back to paleontology. All right, well,

1223
01:09:18,840 --> 01:09:22,120
Speaker 1: we'll leave it at that, but in the meantime, definitely

1224
01:09:22,200 --> 01:09:24,439
Speaker 1: check out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. I'll

1225
01:09:24,520 --> 01:09:26,840
Speaker 1: check out the landing page for this episode because again

1226
01:09:26,840 --> 01:09:30,680
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to try to include images, illustrations of

1227
01:09:30,920 --> 01:09:33,680
Speaker 1: fossil representations, whatever I can find for each of the

1228
01:09:33,800 --> 01:09:37,360
Speaker 1: organisms presented here, so you can have some additional visual

1229
01:09:37,479 --> 01:09:40,599
Speaker 1: idea of what we're talking about. And I'll include links

1230
01:09:41,040 --> 01:09:43,400
Speaker 1: back to some of our other episodes that have dealt

1231
01:09:43,439 --> 01:09:46,040
Speaker 1: with prehistoric organisms. And if you want to get in

1232
01:09:46,080 --> 01:09:48,760
Speaker 1: touch with us directly with feedback about this episode or

1233
01:09:48,760 --> 01:09:51,360
Speaker 1: any other to suggest a future episode topic, you can

1234
01:09:51,439 --> 01:09:54,360
Speaker 1: always email us at blow the Mind at how stuff

1235
01:09:54,400 --> 01:10:06,800
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of

1236
01:10:06,880 --> 01:10:31,920
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com