Scientists discover ancestor to carnivorous eyeballs

26 August 2014 - 14:23 By Times LIVE
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Thylacares brandonensis
Thylacares brandonensis
Image: Haug et al. BMC Evolutionary Biology

Thylacares brandonensis hunted 435 million years ago, grabbing its prey with spiny limbs and crushing it to bits before feasting.

According to IFL Science, it was also the ancestor to the extinct family Thylacares, which evolved into what would have looked like compound eyeballs with legs that stalked the Jurassic seas.

While its long limbs could have served it as an ambush predator, scientists believe it actively hunted its prey.

The family is so bizarre that it has been confused with barnacles and shrimp larvae.

"This early, Silurian, example of Thylacocephala is in many ways much less extreme than the more recent Jurassic species,” Haug explains in a news release.

“It still has normal-sized eyes in contrast to the very enlarged ones that came later, and shorter front claws in T. brandonensis compared to the extremely elongated ones in more recent Jurassic representatives."

The new, more ancient species pushes back scientist's estimates to when the family arose to the Silurian, when life began to appear on land.

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