Rogues' Roundup: Cambrian creatures!

 

In the time I've been doing this blog, one thing that's been a constant has been a steady stream of posts under the Legion of Silly AWESOME Dinosaurs (the name/ gag I always meant to use). Over time, however, I've reached a point where not everything can fit under even my liberal definitions of "dino". With the present post, I have a case and point, a set of new and old acquisitions from a time long before the dinosaurs and even most of the things that aren't dinosaurs (see the zombie synapsid). These are the creatures of the Cambrian Explosion, over half a billion years ago, when the ancestors of everything were swimming the seas and six inches long was large enough to be a major predator. To kick things off, here's one of the most ionic of all, Opabinia.

I remember this from what was probably the touchstone of a generation, a 1993 issue of National Geographic. Ot the specimens you see, one is a little guy from a line called Prehistoric Panorama from the mid-2000s, which probably will get inducted into the Legion sooner or later. The other is from a lot of hazy origin I ordered recently, traceable to a company called ToyMany. It's an early arthropod estimated to be 1 1/2 to 3 inches long, which is about the size of the little one. Many arguments about classification centered on whether it had walking legs. The old model doesn't have legs at all, while the new one shows a line of little caterpillar feet along the whole body. Neither is well supported by current paleontology. Here's a couple more pics (and while I'm at it a mildly funny Lovecraft parody).

"We all float..."

Continuing the lineup, here's a mixed group. These are Prehistoric Panorama figures of Ottoia and Aysheaia. The first of the little guys is a predatory priapulid worm (possibly the dirtiest scientific name ever, if you know Latin) that played Tremors with the Burgess Shale fauna (see my Deep Rising review). The other is an onychophoran, the intermediary lineage between the earthworms and arthropods. For good measure, I threw in an ammonite, which is actually from a bit later as far as we know.

Next up is the centerpiece, Anomalocaris, advertised by the seller as "The Overlord of the Cambrian". That it assuredly was, though the figure of 2 meters would be news to the paleo guys, who have been arguing between 2 and 3 feet. It was unique among arthropods for its spiked grabby limbs and ring-shaped jaws, which infamously were described separately as a shrimp and a jellyfish before we found the whole thing. By any standard, it was the world's first superpredator, big enough to play cat and mouse with even Ottoia, and still one of the biggest arthropods that ever lived. Here's a pic.

From the latest research, this is a bit wonky; in particular, consensus would make the front limbs proportionately larger (and freakier if you think about it). The paint's also iffy, particularly the mouth, which is off-center from the molded detail. Still, there's no question it's big. Here it is with the Toxo Warriors and the Truckstop Queen for reference.

"Super predator? Maybe okay predator..."

To round things out, from the Toymany group, we have a trilobite, which was also a PP collectible I definitely have around somewhere. Technically, they lived from the Cambrian Explosion to the end-Permian extinction, which killed 90% of everything. Also present are a jawless fish (definitely lopsided) and a eurypterid, which previously appeared in this Halloween's Evil Possum adventure. These creatures, like everything else, had relatives alive in the Cambrian, but didn't reach the form seen here until later. Ironically, the eurypterids reached much larger sizes than Anomalocaris, with the largest bing between 6 and 8 feet long. (I based No-Hands' adversaries mainly on a somewhat lesser-known one called Carcinosoma.) They're all pretty good, not quite up to the PP standard, which has been the high-water mark for a while now.

And with that, I'm done for today. It's one more thing crossed off from my paleo junk collection, and some of the best I have. It's also been a reminder that even when I was a kid, the paleo scene didn't begin and end with dinosaurs, and there were people who knew how to get youngsters interested in the wider field. That's all for now, more to come!