Scientists say they've got 20-million-year-old evidence of giant worms that hunted in pretty much the most nightmarish way possible. (From 2021)
, the worm digs a burrow in the seafloor, leaving only its bear trap of a mouth sticking out. When a fish approaches, the bobbit worm shoots out of its burrow with astonishing speed, snapping its jaws around its prey. With violent tugs, the worm then drags the victim down into its lair, where it eats the fish alive.
“This is, we believe, the first time that we've actually found a trace fossil that shows how invertebrates like worms were feeding on vertebrates,” says National Taiwan University sedimentologist Ludvig Löwemark, coauthor of the new paper. “Because, typically, what we find in the sedimentary record is animals that are moving through the sediment.” Invertebrates, for instance, might dig tunnels through the sea bottom and pump water through their burrows, filtering out particles.
Now, bobbit worms and their ancestors aren’t the only critters out there digging burrows in the seafloor. Some kinds of shrimps and bivalves do the same. So how could the researchers be sure they were in fact excavating a worm’s home? These 20-million-year-old burrows, on the other hand, are neatly circular. This tells the scientists that their residents were probably round, as modern bobbit worms are. The researchers can also tell that these burrows lacked reinforcement, which suggests that whatever lived in them instead supported the structures with their bodies to keep them from collapsing. Given that the burrows are more than 6 feet long, that means we could be dealing with one massive worm.
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