3-D Model Recreates Living Blob Which Used To Prowl The Oceans
Posted by Justin on August 4th, 2010
It meandered about the sea, a living blob named Drakozoon kalumon. Surviving by glomming on to other creatures and surviving on the tiniest morsels of food, this 1.7 millimeter creature was protected by a leathery outer skin bigger than it’s own body.
Until it was imprisoned in volcanic ash for 425 million years. But now, Drakozoon is back! Or at least a 3-D model of him is.
Its two coiled arms likely did the work of feeding. “If it worked like a brachiopod, and I suspect it did, it would have used fine setae (hairs) on the arms to generate currents, catch tiny pieces of food in the seawater, and pass them down the arms into the waiting mouth,” Sutton told LiveScience.
The preserved blob was attached to the fossilized shell of a type of spineless shellfish known as a brachiopod. Researchers made the discovery about six years ago in the Herefordshire Lagerstatte, one of England’s richest deposits of soft-bodied fossils.
Doesn’t Drakozoon kalumon just sound like it needs to be chanted by an evil mastermind trying to resurrect some Lovecraftian leviathan? Just asking.
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