"The love I gave you was written before the YR
Buried deep in the Plains of Mesopotamia
Unearthed decades later
The handwriting on the clay tablets is still clearly visible."
What comes to mind when you think of "Fantasia"? After the eighties and nines, it must have hummed up. The reporter learned from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on the 26th that Sun Zhixin, a master's student of the Cambrian outbreak research team of the institute, Dr. Zeng Han and researcher Zhao Fangchen found a unique trilobite in the formation of the mid-Cambrian Mantou Formation in Weifang, Shandong. Because of its special head profile, which resembles a pair of rabbit ears, it was named "Ear-shaped Fantasia".
— A pun, a small Easter egg planted by the researchers: it not only shows that fantasy and unimaginable appearance of fantasy and imagination, but also pays tribute to the musician Jay Chou.
Jay Vantsy
Restoration of the ear-shaped Fantasia (painted by Huo Xiuquan)
With "rabbit ears" The Cambrian trilobite family has added a new member
Trilobites are the most representative ancient animals that appeared in the early Cambrian period 520 million years ago, and are a kind of arthropods, the whole body is clearly divided into three parts: head, thorax and tail, the dorsal carapace is hard, and the dorsal carapace is divided into three roughly equal longitudinal parts - an axis leaf and two rib leaves, so it is called trilobite.
They were the overlords of the Cambrian Period, and some scientists have called the Cambrian "Age of Trilobites", and trilobites reached the highest level of their taxonomic diversity in the Cambrian Period. As one of the Cambrian multi-segmented trilobites " of the " Three Gates " , the fold-cheeked worms were the most prosperous trilobites of trilobites in the midcabonic period , and are also well known as "conservatives" – many trilobites have plagued many trilobites scholars because of their similar morphology. Compared with the tail, the head was more "conserved" in the evolution of trilobites, so examples of head specialization were extremely rare in the fold-cheeked insects of the early and middle Cambrian periods.
But just recently, the Cambrian explosion research team at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences systematically studied a class of trilobites with "rabbit ears" in the mid-Cambrian Mantou Formation in The North China Plateau, and because of the unusual head contours of this trilobite, this new genus was named "Phantaspis auritus".
More complete dorsal shell and skull cap specimen of The ear-shaped Fantasia (left) (right)
"Traditional trilobites have a semi-circular head, and this time we found some strange trilobites with heads that look like an elongated 'M-shape'." Sun Zhixin, a post-90s member of the research team, told reporters that Fantasia has a narrow and long head, which is nearly half the total length of the dorsal shell; the anterior saddle area is exaggerated forward, and there is a conspicuous notch in the middle, making the front part of the head cover resemble a pair of "rabbit ears"; due to the special head cover shape, the active cheeks are also specialized into a machete shape with a flat side edge.
These features, along with their particular eye ridge and head saddle features, make Fantasia distinctly different from any other trilobite genus of the same period, becoming another new member of the Cambrian trilobite family, as well as a rare group of head specializations in the fold-cheeked insect family; it is worth noting that this new species also provides a unique example of the head specialization of trilobites in the middle Cambrian period, which is not only different from other trilobites of the same period, but has not been repeated throughout the evolutionary history of trilobites. This suggests that in addition to the morphological specialization types that were prevalent after the Cambrian, cambrian trilobites may have evolved other different adaptive specialized types.
Dorsal shell reconstruction and ontogenesis of the ear-shaped Fantasia
Why was it named "Fantasia"? This is the romance that belongs to science students
When it comes to naming, Sun Zhixin told reporters that the naming of paleontology should be satisfied: first of all, it is not allowed to duplicate names, and the second is to provide as much information as possible about the species, so that everyone can see the name and have more understanding of this species. For example, the "crown worm" in the trilobite is named because it has a ring of thorns on its head, as if wearing a crown.
From left to right, they are Sun Zhixin, Zeng Han, and Zhao Fangchen
Traditional naming is generally given by place name, or in homage to the fossil collector. However, another use of naming is to facilitate propagation. So, now a lot of researchers will make species naming more interesting. "The word Fantasia itself has a fantasy meaning, and the trilobite we found this time is very different from the specialization that we imagined in the cambrian mid-leaf trilobite, beyond imagination, unique in appearance, and the meaning of the word, and it also happens to be the same as the album name of Zhou Dong, a pun." Sun Zhixin told reporters that he hoped that the "Easter egg" they "planted" would make young people pay more attention to distant paleontological disciplines.
This research was co-funded by the Strategic Pilot Science and Technology Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Category B), the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the State Key Laboratory of Modern Paleontology and Stratigraphy.
Correspondent Sheng Jie Yangzi Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Yu Dandan
Photo courtesy of Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences