My entire Cambrian Catalogue!

Anomalocaris - Canadaspis - Eldonia

Hallucigenia - Helicoplacus - Hurdia

Marella - Pikaia - Opabinia

Haikoucaris - Wiwaxia - Paradoxides

Pomatrum - Rugose Coral - Vetuicola

Are there any missing here that you'd like to see?

if you were just a little anomalocaris in a big world where would you go

My favorite guys!! the radiodonts :)

Alt versions under read more 👁

3-eyed Peytoia version and also a transparent one!

a fossil a day keeps the sad vibes away --- stickers! prints!

Burgess High

I long for a HS drama serial where all the creatures are from the Cambrian. Hallucigenia - Rich girl, stoner (duh), fancies herself an artiste. A little pretentious but has a good heart. Anomalocaris - Awkward boy. Absolute calamity. Can't fit in with anyone. Good at sports. Wiwaxia - Small nerdy girl. Best friends with Opabinia. Sneaky. Devious. Opabina - Big nerdy girl. Always follows rules unless Wiwaxia ropes her into her schemes. Didazoon - Beleaguered middle-aged school principle. Hurdia - Harmless himbo.

Do you have a favorite type of bug? Prehistoric or modern!

For prehistoric bugs, I'll definitely go with radiodonts! I love their silly faces and their flaps!

For modern bugs, my favourite are velvet worms, but my pet whipspider Snippy might get angry if I say this :p

Clementine and some of her cousins!

TRICK OR TREAT 💖

BOO! TRICK! HURDIA ATTACK

image found on wikipedia

Another cryptid reimagined as a radiodont/anomalocarid. Today it's the medieval Bishop Fish redone as an upright cousin of Hurdia.

For those who don't know, the Bishop-fish was a sea monster alledgedly captured in the 16th century and brought to the king of Poland, who wanted to keep it. When a group of Catholic bishops viewed the creature, it gestured to them, begging for release. The bishops intervened on the being's behalf and were able to get it freed.

In my illustration the hurdid head carapace forms the sea-bishop's miter while its Great Appendages form the "hands" and "beard.

Aegirocassis (Aegirocassis benmoulai)

Family: Hurdia Family (Hurdiidae)  

Time Period: Early Ordovician (480 Million Years Ago)

Hundreds of millions of years before the first filter-feeding baleen whales developed, Aegirocassis benmoulai, a species of large marine arthropod, is believed to have lived an uncannily similar life to theirs: it is believed to have fed by filtering zooplankton (microscopic aquatic animals) out of the water using a sieve-like structure made up of highly modified limbs connected to its head, and similarly to baleen whales it seems that a diet of tiny yet extremely abundant animals allowed it to reach enormous sizes (reaching lengths of over 2 meters/6.6ft, which though not all that large when compared to many modern animals likely made it the largest animal to have ever lived in its time.) Aegirocassis lived in what is now Morocco (which at the time was beneath a vast ocean due to the extremely high sea levels during the Ordovician period), and is believed to have swam through the regular movement of two sets of flap-like membranes - the membranes on its ventral surface (underside) propelled it forwards, while the membranes on its dorsal surface (top) may have stabilized it and aided it in steering. Aegirocassis is an example of a radiodont (an extinct group of early marine carnivorous arthropods characterized by flexible segmented appendages on their heads used for feeding), and its evolution interestingly mirrors that of many other large filter feeders that would come after it: the first known radiodonts were small actively-hunting predators that are believed to have used their feeding appendages to grab and crush prey, and Aegirocassis’s ancestors were likely able to use their appendages to filter plankton from the water alongside their diet of larger animals before gradually developing appendages that were better suited to filter feeding to take advantage of highly abundant plankton, while the earliest known baleen whale, Mystacodon selenensis was much smaller than modern baleen whales and had both baleen and teeth (indicating that it too both actively hunted and filter-fed, and only later began to transition into a purely filter-feeding existence and develop more efficient baleen to enable a purely plankton-based diet.) The name Aegirocassis translates roughly to “Aegir’s Helmet” (with Ægir, anglicised as Aegir, being a supernatural being and personification of the sea in Norse mythology), while the species name, benmoulai, honours Mohamed Ben Moula, a fossil collector who discovered the first known Aegirocassis fossil in 2015.

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I’m generally more interested in extant animals than extinct ones, but prehistoric wildlife is still interesting and I was recently gifted a calendar that will give me a prehistoric animal for each month - if all goes to plan, I’ll aim to do a post about each “fossil of the month” for the rest of 2023!

Image Source: https://theconversation.com/fossils-of-huge-plankton-eating-sea-creature-shine-light-on-early-arthropod-evolution-38520

<3

YOU YOU YOU!!!!

YOU GET HURDIA!!!!!

Paleo Party Time! This guest is Hurdia, a relative of anomalocaris :)

wgat if . you didnt look both ways before you crossed the street . and this happened

if there was one species of radidonta you could have as a pet which would you choose. personally i’d go with peytoia nathorsti or maybe hurdia victoria

i choose Amplectobelua symbrachiata! whose name means Embracing Beast. they have little grabby pincers but are small enough that i could take care of them in a normal home. (cousin Anomalocaris was huge by the way, like dog sized, absolutely massive monster of a stem arthropod.) there are other small radiodonts that are cute and silly looking and that i wish to observe in real life, but many were filter feeders or sediment rummagers and i think they'd break all my things and chew up my furniture. out of my house with them. i would name my A. symbrachiata Florence.

this is probably the very largest A. symbrachiata get:

just listed a bunch of new stickers & tentacle cups on etsy!

we've got pairs of trilobites (phacops rana & carolinites), ammonoids (arcestes & didymoceras), and radiodonts (hurdia & anomalocaris)!!

orders of 3+ stickers get $5 off!

Mermay Prompts (Unofficial)- Prehistoric Edition

Anomalocaris

Trilobite

Megalodon

Essexella

Dunkleosteus

Ammonite

Icthyosaur

Plesiosaur

Cameroceras

Opabinia

Tamisiocaris borealis

Hurdia victoria

Hallucigenia

Wiwaxia

Ottoia prolifica

Haplophrentis carinatus

Isoxys

Marrella

Leanchoilia

Dickinsonia

Syllipsimopodi bideni

Styletoctopus

Tusoteuthis

Priscomyzon riniensis

Asterotrygon maloneyi

Glyphithyreus

Leedsichthys

Tylosaurus

Metriorhynchus

Kronosaurus

Prehistoric hominid (Reverse Mermaid!)

The last prompt is a bit of a wild card, with the human side being prehistoric as well as the fish.

(I personally will not be able to post every day, but I intend to fill all 31 prompts).

This is not intended to be scientific, more of an exploration of sea creature art, and the extinct sealife I see getting passed over in most MerMays. I'll still be making traditional mermaid art for most of these (with a twist). I hope you enjoy.