The Cambrian - when flesh-eating penis worms roamed the earth

06 May 2015 - 13:44 By Times LIVE
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"Priapulus caudatus"
"Priapulus caudatus"
Image: Shunkina Ksenia via Wikimedia Commons

Earth 500 million years ago played host to flesh-eating penis worms, which dragged themselves around using their teeth.

These worms, known as priapulids, emerged during the Cambrian The Telegraph reports.

Some of these worms still exist, relegated to the cold dark depths of the ocean.

“But during the Cambrian, they were fearsome beasts, and extremely successful ones at that,”  Dr Martin Smith, a postdoctoral researcher in Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences said.

Scientists at Cambridge are currently trying to figure out how widespread they were.

And those teeth have proved to be the key to figuring this out.

Most Cambrian species are soft bodied, which isn't exactly great when it comes to fossilisation.

The teeth of the priapulids were small, and frequently misidentified as spores, but this has now been corrected, allowing researchers to figure out just where these worms lived.

Their research has been published in the journal Palaeontology.

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