Critter of the Week, 5/29/09: Schinderhannes

No, not the German criminal. Schinderhannes bartelsi may soon prove to be one of the more important fossil discoveries in arthropod science. Schinderhannes might be no different from any other anomalocarid - if it hadn't lived 100 million years after its close relatives had supposedly died out. While it was presumed for some time that the Anomalocarididae had gone extinct at the end of the Cambrian, about 510 or so million years ago, the 390 million-year-old Schinderhannes dates from the end of the Devonian. Additionally, it offers some odd clues to arthropod evolution - it seems to be transitional between anomalocarids and true arthropods. Though scientists still don't know quite what to make of this, it remains an interesting species nonetheless. As seen in the picture above, this genera has a body similar to that of trilobites and other early arthropods, but a head and mouth almost identical to those of Anomalocaris, as well as hard protrusions similar to those of Hurdia, another Cambrian anomalocarid.