Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. This is definitely one creature you wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley, at least if you were around 500 million years ago.

University of Toronto provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA. University of Toronto provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR. Paleontology is undergoing a new ...

International team of researchers describe new fossil species discovered in fossil deposit near Llandrindod Wells in mid-Wales. The fossil, Mierridduryn bonniae, shares many features with Cambrian ...

Palaeontologists are helping resolve the evolution and ecology of Odaraia, a taco-shaped marine animal that lived during the Cambrian period. Fossils reveal Odaraia had mandibles. Palaeontologists are ...

Despite differences in shape and size all insects are characterized by a body organization that includes three units: a head, thorax and abdomen (panels A-B). In contrast all spiders (and other ...

Around half a billion years ago, in what is now the Yunnan Province of China, a tiny larva was trapped in mud. Hundreds of millions of years later, after the mud had long since become the black shales ...

For over a century, the Cambrian arthropod Helmetia expansa remained a mystery. Discovered by paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott in 1918, it was initially classified as a crustacean. Despite ...

One of several Jianfengia fossil specimens: The animal's body plan is extremely simple, consisting of numerous identical segments. However, its head is like that of a more modern crustacean, with eyes ...

A team of scientists have discovered an ancient arthropod that may show the origins of branched limbs and the first gill-like breathing structures in the clade. When researchers working in ...