The 520-million-year-old gentle giant: Fossil reveals bizarre new species of whale-like creature that filtered plankton

Fossils found in Greenland reveal marine animals used facial appendages to filter food from the ocean

Forefathers of today's whales swam using flaps on the sides of their body



Large appendages in front of their mouths could also capture larger prey

The fossils revealed they then evolved into suspension feeders and their grasping appendages morphed into a filter



Evidence of gentle giants that swam in the oceans more than 500 million years ago has been discovered.



Fossils found in northern Greenland show that ancient, giant marine creatures used bizarre, whale-like facial appendages to filter food from the ocean.

The study described how the strange species, named Tamisiocaris, used huge, specialised facial parts to filter plankton - similar to the way some modern whales feed today.

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Bizarre: Tamisiocaris (illustration, pictured) swam using flaps down either side of the body and had large appendages in front of its mouths to catch prey. These appendages were made up of jointed segments, which could curl like fingers to grasp prey

WHAT WAS THE TAMISIOCARIS?

Tamisiocaris belonged to a group of animals called anomalocarids. The creatures lived 520 million years ago during the Early Cambrian - a period known as the Cambrian Explosion - in which all the major animal groups and complex ecosystems suddenly appeared. Anomalocarids were a type of early arthropod that included some of the largest animals of the Cambrian period. They were flat animals that had two grasping appendages in front of the mouth, known as the 'great appendages'.

These were made up of jointed segments, which could curl like fingers to grasp prey.

Each segment also featured a pair of spines used to impale food.

The new fossils show that these predators eventually evolved into suspension feeders when these grasping appendages morphed into a filtering apparatus.

Tamisiocaris is one of many recent discoveries of diverse anomalocarids found in rocks aged between 520 to 480 million years old in northern Greenland.

The creatures lived 520 million years ago during the Early Cambrian, a period known as the Cambrian Explosion in which all the major animal groups and complex ecosystems suddenly appeared.



Tamisiocaris belonged to a group of animals called anomalocarids, a type of early arthropod that included the largest and some of the most iconic animals of the Cambrian period.



They swam using flaps down either side of the body and had large appendages in front of their mouths that may have used to capture larger prey, such as trilobites.

However, the newly discovered fossils show that those predators eventually evolved into suspension feeders when these grasping appendages morphed into a filtering apparatus.



This meant the animals could be sweep through water and trapping small crustaceans and other organisms as small as half a millimetre in size like a net.



Lead author Dr Jakob Vinther, a lecturer in macro-evolution at the University of Bristol, said: 'These primitive arthropods were, ecologically speaking, the sharks and whales of the Cambrian era.



'In both sharks and whales, some species evolved into suspension feeders and became gigantic, slow-moving animals that in turn fed on the smallest animals in the water.'

In order to fully understand how the Tamisiocaris might have fed, the researchers created a 3D computer animation of the feeding appendage to explore the range of movements it could have made.

Pictured is one of the feeding appendages of Tamisiocaris borealis. It would have worked similarly to the grill found in modern whales to filter plankton out of sea water

Dr Martin Stein, of the University of Copenhagen who created the computer animation, said: 'Tamisiocaris would have been a sweep net feeder, collecting particles in the fine mesh formed when it curled its appendage up against its mouth.

'This is a rare instance when you can actually say something concrete about the feeding ecology of these types of ancient creatures with some confidence.'



The discovery also helps highlight just how productive the Cambrian period was, showing how vastly different species of anomalocaridids evolved at that time, and provides further insight into the ecosystems that existed hundreds of millions of years ago.



Tamisiocaris belonged to a group of animals called anomalocarids. They would have used their large appendages to capture larger prey, such as trilobites (fossil, pictured) before they evolved into suspension-feeding mammals

The ancient creature is the ancestors of modern whales, such as the humpback whale, pictured here, which feed by forcing water through its mouth filters and trapping small crustaceans and other organisms like a net

Dr Vinther added: 'The fact that large, free-swimming suspension feeders roamed the oceans tells us a lot about the ecosystem.



'Feeding on the smallest particles by filtering them out of the water while actively swimming around requires a lot of energy - and therefore lots of food.'

Co-author Dr Nicholas Longrich, of the University of Bath, added: 'We once thought that anomalocarids were a weird, failed experiment.

'Now we're finding that they pulled off a major evolutionary explosion, doing everything from acting as top predators to feeding on tiny plankton.'