New research has called into question the ferocity of an ancient shrimplike sea creature which terrorised other marine life in the distant past.
At roughly two feet long, Anomalocaris Canadensis was one of the largest sea creatures roaming the earth 508 million years ago. It had two fang like appendages growing out of its armoured head.
This led paleontologists to think it was capable of crushing hard shelled invertebrates before devouring them.
Research which was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B has now called this into question.
"That didn't sit right with me, because trilobites have a very strong exoskeleton, which they essentially make out of rock, while this animal would have mostly been soft and squishy," lead author Russell Bicknell, postdoctoral researcher in the American Museum of Natural History's division of palaeontology, told CNN.
His team used whip scorpions and whip spiders as present-day contemporaries due to their similar appendages. The study showed Anomalocaris Canadensis was capable of using its appendages to grab prey.
However, the research concluded the appendages were not strong enough to crush hard shelled prey.
This means the creature was more likely to only hunt soft prey in well-lit open water.
"Previous conceptions were that these animals would have seen the Burgess Shale fauna as a smorgasbord, going after anything they wanted to, but we're finding that the dynamics of the Cambrian food webs were likely much more complex than we once thought," Bicknell said.
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