The crab family just got a bunch of new cousins, including a 95-million-year-old species that will force scientists to rethink the definition of a crab — and perhaps the disparate ways animals evolve over time.
The crab family just got a bunch of new cousins, including a 95-million-year-old species that will force scientists to rethink the definition of a crab — and perhaps the disparate ways animals evolve over time.
An international team of researchers led by Yale paleontologist Javier Luque announced the discovery of hundreds of exceptionally well-preserved specimens from rock formations in Colombia and the United States that date back to the mid-Cretaceous period of 90-95 million years ago. The cache includes hundreds of tiny comma shrimp fossils, with their telltale comma-esque curve; several carideans, which are the widely found “true” shrimp; and an entirely new branch of the evolutionary tree for crabs.
Read more at Yale University
Image: Artistic reconstruction of Callichimaera perplexa: The strangest crab that has ever lived. (Image credit: Elissa Martin, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History
