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The worm stands upright and raises its spindled arms above its head as if giving a hearty ovation.

Researchers with the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto detailed the 500-million-year-old critter for the first time in a study that is to be published Tuesday in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

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The bizarre creature, no bigger than a thumb, lived under water in a spot that is today a shale-strewn mountain ridge in British Columbia’s Yoho National Park.

It has been dubbed Ovatiovermis cribratus, from the Latin “ovatio” meaning ovation and “vermis” meaning worm. Cribratus comes from “sieve” — the study’s authors believe the worm used its spiky forelimbs to comb through Cambrian waters for food particles.

“We’re not speculating if it was very happy or not, but it was waving its arms like someone doing an ovation, so we called it the worm that does an ovation — the ovation worm,” said University of Toronto PhD candidate Cedric Aria, who co-authored the study.