An illustration of Aegirocassis benmoulae
An illustration of Aegirocassis benmoulae – Marianne Collins / AP / SIPA

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A sea monster haunted seas there 480 million years. Yale and Oxford researchers have discovered a creature resembling a crustacean two meters long, which fed as do whales today. This animal “would have been one of the greatest living at that time,” according to zoologist Allison Daley, one of the authors of the study, the University of Oxford.

The study, conducted by scientists from the Universities of Oxford (UK) and Yale (USA), was published Wednesday in the journal Nature .

and his food by filtering seawater

The sea monster was wearing on his head a network of thorns that filtered food and would be the oldest known representative aquatic giants that feed by filtering seawater. This new species was named Aegirocassis benmoulae after the name of the Moroccan fossil hunter Mohamed Ben Moula, who conducted excavations in Morocco.

Aegirocassis benmoulae is part of the missing family anomalocaridides, animals sailors appeared there 520 million years. However, so far most of the discovered anomalocaridides were predators who were at the top of the food chain, closer to our current sharks.

This new species of anomalocaridide more like our whales that they also filter seawater through their baleen to collect plankton, but are they the family of mammals.

Fins on each side of his body

Peter Van Roy, one of the other authors of the study from Yale University, used a new method of analysis of fossil which allowed to have a 3D vision of the animal, as it should be when it ruled the oceans on fossils found in Morocco and from the collections of the Peabody Museum of Yale, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Smithsonian in Washington.

The study of fossils, which are flat as dried flowers in a book, usually do not give much detail.

This study was able to show that the Aegirocassis benmoulae were also kinds of fins on each side of his body.

These fins are the ancestors of the double row of characteristic legged arthropods, invertebrates covered with a shell like crustaceans, spiders and insects. Making it the closest cousins ​​of the now extinct arthropods Aegirocassis.