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Ordovician Anomalocarids -- Yikes!

Alessandra Kelley

Alessandra Kelley

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Yeah. Can you believe when they first found fossils those grabby-tentacles at the front by their mouths, they thought they were the headless remains of shrimps? The Latin for shrimp is "caris", and the name of these things, "anomalocaris" means "weird shrimp" because of this misunderstanding.
 
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Maxx

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Alessandra Kelley said:
Yeah. Can you believe when they first found fossils those grabby-tentacles at the front by their mouths, they thought they were the headless remains of shrimps? The Latin for shrimp is "caris", and the name of these things, "anomalocaris" means "weird shrimp" because of this misunderstanding.
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I find them pleasantly disturbing and alien. From my toddler years I have had a great affection for trilobites.
I was showing my photographic atlas of trilobites to a friend and she confessed they gave her the willies.

Maybe these giant buggy creatures give me the willies, but apparently it is a sensation I enjoy.
 
Alessandra Kelley

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There are some incredible trilobite fossils at the Field Museum of Natural History, in Chicago. I'm not sure how they prepared them -- dentists' drill? -- but they are real rock fossils, fully 3-D with all sorts of delicate appendages and antlers and things. Just amazing.
 
Maxx

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Alessandra Kelley said:
There are some incredible trilobite fossils at the Field Museum of Natural History, in Chicago. I'm not sure how they prepared them -- dentists' drill? -- but they are real rock fossils, fully 3-D with all sorts of delicate appendages and antlers and things. Just amazing.
Click to expand...

I have Levi-Setti's book on trilobites. Some of those are in there and he does things like photograph them immersed in different liquids.

Highly cool: http://books.google.com/books?id=rR...EwAA#v=onepage&q=physicist trilobites&f=false
 
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