Fossils are a gift from nature, giving us an in-depth understanding of the Earth and ancient species, but scientists have encountered many difficulties in the process. For example, American scientists have found a "grotesque worm" in the Burgess Mountains, and they can't distinguish between its head and tail and the front and back, until more than half a century later, it was successfully cracked by Chinese archaeologists. What is the mystery behind the "grotesque worm"? Below, let xiaobian reveal the secret to you from scratch.
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Located in the Canadian Rockies, Burgess Is a rich paleontological fossil and is known as a "paradise" for archaeologists, so the Cambrian Burgess biota was discovered and listed as a World Heritage Site in 1981. In addition, Professor Walcott also found more than 140 kinds of marine paleontological fossils here, dating back about 500 million years, which played a great value and role in the study of the Cambrian period of life explosions.
Professor Walcott is a well-known American paleontologist who studies paleontology in the early Cambrian period. Cambrian is the division of the earth's period, but also the emergence of marine invertebrates, called the "Cambrian explosion of life", a little earlier than the Cambrian is the early Cambrian, Professor Walcott is an expert in this area, so he often crossed the mountains and went to the Burgess Mountains for investigation.
In July 1909, Professor Walcott and his two assistants once again ascended the Burgess Mountains in search of the fossils of their dreams, and it was during this expedition that Professor Walcott made a discovery that shocked the world. At that time, Professor Walcott and his assistants turned over the pit, they suddenly saw a layer of uneven color rock, so the two assistants excavated the rock formation, And Walcott taught to find some paleontological fossils on the peeling rocks, including coelenterate fossils, link animal fossils and echinoderm fossils, etc., which are very rich in variety.
Professor Walcott was overjoyed, took more than 200 fossils, then packed them up and brought them back to the laboratory for study. Professor Walcott did not look closely when packing the fossils, but when he returned to the laboratory to analyze the fossils one by one, he found that there was a very strange paleontology on the rock, very small, only 2.2 centimeters, with a curved body with 7 burrs and 7 tentacles, and a large and small end. Professor Walcott had never seen a similar fossil, and after some research he could not determine its head and tail and its front and tail, so he named it Grotesque Worm.
Although the discovery of the grotesque insect enriched the paleontological species, it also brought doubts to scientists, and it was not until more than 30 years later that the British paleontologist Morris determined the head and tail of the grotesque insect, he believed that the larger end was the head, the smaller end was the tail, and the burr was its leg. However, many people objected to Morris's inference, thinking that such a creature was too strange, but they could not give a different opinion.
Since Western scientists can't explain it, let's leave it to our archaeologists. On July 1, 1984, Professor Hou, a famous paleontological archaeologist in China, took his students to the Hat Tianshan Mountain in Chengjiang, Yunnan Province, because the cambrian period rock formations had been found here, so it is very likely that there are paleontological fossils from the Cambrian period. After a few days of climbing over the mountains, Professor Hou has found nothing, and it is inevitable that he will be a little frustrated, but Professor Hou did not give up, because his professional knowledge told him that there must be paleontological fossils in the Maotian Mountain, so he went up to the mountain early and returned to the mountain every day to look for it.
One afternoon, when Professor Hou was climbing over the rock pit, his heels touched a broken rock formation, and there was a muffled sound when he fell to the ground, and Professor Hou looked back and found that there was a black substance on the fractured rock layer - fossils. Professor Hou was overjoyed, and then went down to the rock pit to retrieve the rock, and after observing it, he found that it was a grotesque worm that was famous in the academic community, but there was some difference from the grotesque worm discovered by American scientists.
Professor Hou returned to the laboratory to study carefully and found the difference between the two grotesque insects, it turned out that the grotesque insect fossils found by American scientists were only part of the grotesque insects' bodies, while the grotesque insect fossils found by Professor Hou were complete, with a length of about 4 centimeters. In addition, the burrs and tentacles of the grotesque insect are still paired structures, and there are small pliers at the end of the tentacles, so the tentacles are its legs, and it can also be preyed on with small tongs, and the burrs are a defensive structure that it uses to protect itself, just like the hedgehogs that curl up in danger, so the grotesque insect should also be such a physiological structure.
In addition, the grotesque insect fossil found by Professor Hou is not one large and one small, but two heads of uniform size, one of which is flat and the other has burrs, so it can be inferred that the flat one is the head and the burr is the tail. As for why the grotesque worm discovered by American scientists is large and small, Professor Hou speculates that the internal organs of the grotesque worm may have been squeezed out, resulting in a fossil larger than the body. By 2015, Professor Hou's research had been recognized by academic experts, and the authoritative academic journal Nature magazine also published relevant papers, which once again proved Professor Hou's inference.
A small living species, scientists around the world have spent more than 70 years to correctly distinguish its head and tail, it is not easy, and the subsequent research has more challenges. It can be seen that there may be many more ancient biological species that we do not know.
Wenlan Hairun Studio Editor-in-Chief Wen Xiucai, this article is written by: Special History Writer: Liu Lijiang's