Paleontologists recently announced the discovery of an ancient animal in a stone quarry in southern Ontario, Canada, that is so well preserved that they have dubbed the area "Paleo Pompeii".
The research team reported in a new study that the species represented by the specimen is part of an extinct group of arthropods that lived approximately 450 million years ago. The discovery of this species is all the more startling because it is completely soft-bodied, unlike other echinoderm fossils that typically contain parts that are more likely to be preserved over time.
Joseph Moysiuk, a PhD candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto and a researcher at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, was the lead study author. Moysiuk told Live Science that soft-tissue preservation is very rare, and there are only a few sites around the world where soft-bodied organisms have been found.
The specimen is just shy of an index finger and can fit in the palm of a hand. The animal's body is similar to arthropods such as insects and spiders, with multiple sets of limbs and one very unusual pair.
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Moysiuk said that the amazing pair of limbs that are extremely long and have foot-like projections at the terminal ends are most likely used to travel across the seafloor.
Trove of marine fossils were discovered in Morocco.
The strange arthropod was discovered last summer during a formal excavation of an active quarry owned by the Tomlinson Group, an infrastructure service company based in eastern Canada. The species Tomlinsonus dimitrii was named after the group that allowed them to dig up the site.
Prior to this dig, the paper's co-author and an independent paleontological technician who has been investigating the quarry's fossil beds since 2014, George Kampouris, was the leader of the dig. The specimen is similar to another extinct soft-bodied arthropod called Marrella splendens.
The Lake Simcoe quarry was once submerged in water and was part of a shallow tropical marine sea that covered much of what is now modern-day Canada. Storms blanketed the seafloor for millions of years.
Moysiuk said that the organisms that were living on this flat, shallow ocean bottom were smothered by large undersea mudflows from storm events.
Moysiuk and his fellow researchers hope that this discovery will help close the gap in the fossil record for this group of arthropods.
The Tomlinsonus dimitrii specimen is currently on display in the Willner Madge Gallery as part of the museum's Dawn of Life exhibit.
The findings were published in the Journal of Paleontology.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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