Hallucigenia at the Chicago Field Museum

Hallucigenia is an extinct genus of animal found as fossils in the Middle Cambrian-aged Burgess Shale formation of British Columbia, Canada. I first read about the Burgess Shale organisms 15 years ago. To see them come to life at the Field Museum was spectacular.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucigenia

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• field
• museum
• burgess
• shale
• chicago
• hallucigenia

[BloodScorchedSun]

thats sick is this real or cgi?

[simonsonjh]

@BloodScorchedSun Those animals have been extinct for about 500 million years. Way before cameras existed.

[philagon]

@simonsonjh If it was mobile, the larger part of its body would be susceptible to predation due to the length of its legs. This would discount any benefit of the protective "spines" on its back. However, if these legs were buried in the seasand, the spine-covered main body would be completely protected by the protrusive defenses of the spines.

[simonsonjh]

@philagon I see there has been several hypotheses about the life-style of Hallucigenia, with you ideas fitting in as well as any of them. I'd buy a set of models.

[philagon]

find it more likely that this creature was sedentary, with the "legs" rooted into the seafloor or that the entire organism is a severred appendage from a lqrger animal.

[simonsonjh]

@philagon Yes, I could indeed have been sedentary. I'm not sure what the latest thinking is about this animal.

[flareside259]

the Hallusigenia hongmeias' net structured sclerites are thought to be tons of sensory or secretory papillae on them also.



[flareside259]

@flareside259 Hallusigenia hongmeia not sparsa

[flareside259]

its thought that the claws on the Hallusigenia sparsa, because they are curved, were more for climbing and hanging onto benthic organisms or algae, instead of walking in mud.

[flareside259]

They are more than likely mobile. The "spikes" are called sclerites and in this species in the video (Hallucigenia sparsa) it is believed they are for defense. The Hallusigenia hongmeia's sclerites are much shorter and cone shaped but are made of a net like structure(25 micron holes).

Its still not known for the Hallucigenia sparsa which was its anterior-posterior direction due to bad preservation of soft parts

This is the entire animal seeing we find multiple like it in the Burgess Shale.

[TheDilla12]

I have about hallucigenia at school!! I want to writhe about it, because it is so funny!!! :-D They dont now wath who is opp, and wath who is down at it:-D

[GuenterBechly]

@philagon

No, Hallucigenia was almost certainly not sedentary, because its walking legs and raptorial proboscis clearly point to a mobile predator. Furthermore, it is clearly not a fragment of another animal. We know several complete fossils, and they belong to the lobopodian grade of stem group arthropods. In this group there are no sedentary animals. Hallucigenia walked like the related recent Onychophora.

[BloodScorchedSun]

@simonsonjh thats what I thought I was confused by the museum part Im guessing a display thing?