The spiny kite-bearer Derek Briggs et al.

Some parents might wish their children were tethered to them at all times. Now a prehistoric animal has emerged that appears to have done precisely that.

The 1-centimetre-long marine creature, entombed in volcanic ash some 430 million years ago, was found fossilised in Herefordshire, UK, with 10 of its young still attached to its body by thin threads.

The offspring’s resemblance to kites has led its discoverers to call it the kite runner, after the novel by Khalid Hosseini. The Latin name they have chosen, Aquilonifer spinosus, means “spiny kite-bearer”.


The creature is an arthropod – a group that includes insects, spiders and crustaceans. Its unusual parenting strategy might have helped it carry offspring away from danger, or help them find food.

Mark Sutton of Imperial College London analysed the fossil with colleagues at Yale University. They ground away the fossil layer by layer, taking photographs of each section to build a 3D reconstruction (click image at bottom of story to view an animation of the creature).

Sutton initially thought the attached individuals were some sort of parasite, but the more they examined them the less likely that seemed.

“The most telling argument for the adult wanting them to be there is that the creature has large and flexible appendages which could certainly have removed the ‘kites’ if it wanted to,” he says. “If it wanted them to be there, the only real possibility is that they were its young.”

Some living arthopods carry their young around during their early development. In freshwater crayfish, for example, the embryos are attached to the adult by a stalk. When the hatchling emerges, it stays tethered until it is old enough to grip its parent directly.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1600489113

Derek Briggs et al.