Ancient Sea Worm Named after Legendary ‘Dune’ Monster Unveiled in Groundbreaking Study
A University of Kansas paleontologist excavating a fossil trove known as the “Spence Shale Lagerstatte” has discovered a previously undiscovered species of ancient marine worm. The discovery has now been published in Historical Biology.
Rhiannon LaVine, a research associate with the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, discovered the fossil while camping and conducting fieldwork in the High Creek region of the Spence Shale, a geological formation in northern Utah and southern Idaho. Since the early 1900s, the region has been renowned for its profusion of approximately 90 species of Cambrian trilobites and soft fossils.
LaVine stated, “One of the last times we were out there, I split open one of these pieces of rock and instantly knew it was something that wasn’t typical,”. “he first thing we see are these radial blades that look like stars or flowers. Immediately, I showed it to Julian Kimmig (the principal author). He was confused. He stated, “I’ve never seen anything like that.” We were out with Paul Jamison, a local who’s been working the site for years—and if there’s something in there that somebody’s seen, he’s seen it. But he hadn’t seen it.”
After returning the fossil to the KU Biodiversity Institute, where it is now a permanent part of the paleontological collection, LaVine consulted with colleagues about the enigmatic fossil.
LaVine then collaborated with University of Missouri colleagues to conduct scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy on the fossil.
“We mainly wanted to make sure that this was a biological thing, because it’s possible it could have just been some weird mineral growth with the way it looked,” said the KU researcher. “So that was primarily why we brought it to them. It’s about 7 or 8 centimeters long, maybe a little shorter than the length of a smartphone. It’s sizable for a fossil of that sort. We did the scanning to rule out that it wasn’t just a mineral growth, and we were able to do that.”
Finally, LaVine and her co-authors were able to identify the fossil as a previously unknown species of annelid, a phylum containing approximately 21,000 “segmented worm” species found in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments worldwide.
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Newly Discovered Fossil Confirmed as Unidentified Annelid Species
As the discoverer of the new fossil worm and co-author of the paper describing it, LaVine assigned the scientific name Shaihuludia shurikeni to the species. Shai-Hulud is the native name for the worms on the planet Arrakis in the “Dune” novels by Frank Herbert, while “shuriken” is the Japanese word for hurling star, signifying the shape of the blade-like chaetae (chaetae are stiff bristles that are characteristic of many annelids).
Shaihuludia shurikeni is significant, much like its sci-fi namesake, because describing a new species of Cambrian annelid is rare.
The primary author of the study, paleontologist Julien Kimmig of the State Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe, Germany, stated, “Annelids are very rare in the Cambrian of North America, and so far we only knew of a single specimen from the Spence Shale,”.
During this procedure, the team reexamined a fossilized annelid previously discovered in the Spence Shale and reclassified it as Burgessochaeta, which was a surprise because Burgessochaeta had only previously been discovered in a different renowned fossil deposit in British Columbia, Canada.
Both worm species would have lived in a marine ecosystem dominated by invertebrate organisms such as trilobites, brachiopods, mollusks, and early arthropod forms. The mid-Cambrian is distinguished for its rich marine biodiversity.
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Source: Phys.org
