WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.540 I want you to picture a scene, but not the usual 00:00:03.540 --> 00:00:05.820 prehistoric scene, you know, the sunny, shallow 00:00:05.820 --> 00:00:08.220 reef with trilobites everywhere. I want you to 00:00:08.220 --> 00:00:10.820 go deeper, darker. We're about half a billion 00:00:10.820 --> 00:00:13.640 years back, Cambrian period. It's murky, maybe 00:00:13.640 --> 00:00:16.120 even pitch black down there. And coming out of 00:00:16.120 --> 00:00:19.620 that darkness is something that really defies 00:00:19.620 --> 00:00:21.679 description. It's got the body of a giant shrimp, 00:00:21.879 --> 00:00:24.660 armor like a tank, and a face just full of these. 00:00:25.670 --> 00:00:27.989 These fractal spikes. And the eyes. We can't 00:00:27.989 --> 00:00:30.129 forget the eyes on this thing. Oh, the eyes are 00:00:30.129 --> 00:00:32.170 just the stuff of nightmares. And we are absolutely 00:00:32.170 --> 00:00:34.450 getting to those because the stats are. They're 00:00:34.450 --> 00:00:37.130 unbelievable. But here's the kicker. Until just 00:00:37.130 --> 00:00:39.590 a few years ago, we thought we knew this creature. 00:00:39.649 --> 00:00:41.229 We thought it was the T -Rex of its time, the 00:00:41.229 --> 00:00:44.109 ultimate bad boy of the Cambrian Ocean. But a 00:00:44.109 --> 00:00:47.030 paper dropped in 2023 that just. It completely 00:00:47.030 --> 00:00:49.829 rewrote the script. It really did. It's a classic 00:00:49.829 --> 00:00:52.570 case of mistaken identity. For decades, this 00:00:52.570 --> 00:00:54.670 fossil was, you know, sitting in collections 00:00:54.670 --> 00:00:57.009 labeled as a top -tier predator. But thanks to 00:00:57.009 --> 00:00:59.049 some incredible work by researchers Patterson, 00:00:59.170 --> 00:01:01.750 Garcia -Bolido, and Edgecombe, looking at fossils 00:01:01.750 --> 00:01:04.569 from the Emu Bay Shale in Australia, we now know 00:01:04.569 --> 00:01:06.769 it was something else entirely. Which brings 00:01:06.769 --> 00:01:09.430 us to our deep dive today. We are looking at 00:01:09.430 --> 00:01:11.950 a creature that went through a massive rebranding. 00:01:12.010 --> 00:01:15.500 From Anomalocars brigsii, to the brand new Echidna 00:01:15.500 --> 00:01:18.319 Charis. And what I love about this story isn't 00:01:18.319 --> 00:01:20.980 just the name change. It's what that change implies. 00:01:21.500 --> 00:01:24.980 It turns out being a killer shrimp isn't the 00:01:24.980 --> 00:01:27.420 only way to win the evolutionary game. Precisely. 00:01:27.579 --> 00:01:30.340 This is a story about adaptation. It's about 00:01:30.340 --> 00:01:32.680 how life in the Cambrian explosion wasn't just, 00:01:32.700 --> 00:01:34.379 you know, throwing random shapes at the wall. 00:01:34.459 --> 00:01:36.500 It was highly specialized. We're looking at an 00:01:36.500 --> 00:01:39.560 animal that took a predator's tool kit and repurposed 00:01:39.560 --> 00:01:42.560 it into this complex high -tech machinery for... 00:01:43.310 --> 00:01:45.950 Well, for eating soup, basically. Eating soup 00:01:45.950 --> 00:01:47.730 with high -tech machinery. That is a sentence 00:01:47.730 --> 00:01:49.870 I didn't expect to say today. So, okay, let's 00:01:49.870 --> 00:01:51.849 start with this identity crisis. Because for 00:01:51.849 --> 00:01:53.409 a long, long time, if you were into this stuff, 00:01:53.450 --> 00:01:55.769 you knew this animal as Anomalocaris. Right. 00:01:56.790 --> 00:01:59.609 Specifically, Anomalocaris brigzi. It was first 00:01:59.609 --> 00:02:03.109 described back in 1995. And at the time, it made 00:02:03.109 --> 00:02:04.769 sense. It looked like Anomalocaris. It was a 00:02:04.769 --> 00:02:08.169 radiodont, which is this order of early arthropods 00:02:08.169 --> 00:02:10.409 that just dominates the Cambrian. They all have 00:02:10.409 --> 00:02:13.680 a similar vibe. segmented body, swimming flaps, 00:02:13.800 --> 00:02:16.979 and two big appendages coming off the head. And 00:02:16.979 --> 00:02:19.379 Anomalocorus is the celebrity of that group, 00:02:19.500 --> 00:02:21.419 right? It's the one on all the documentary posters. 00:02:21.520 --> 00:02:23.659 It's the hunter, the one that crunches trilobites. 00:02:23.780 --> 00:02:26.580 So lumping this new fossil in with the celebrity, 00:02:26.740 --> 00:02:29.120 that seems like a pretty safe bet. It was a safe 00:02:29.120 --> 00:02:31.400 bet based on what they had. They assumed it was 00:02:31.400 --> 00:02:34.319 just another species of the same hunter. But 00:02:34.319 --> 00:02:37.469 this is where the emu bay shale comes in. We 00:02:37.469 --> 00:02:39.189 have to talk about the quality of these fossils. 00:02:39.370 --> 00:02:41.509 This isn't just a rock with a smudge. It's a 00:02:41.509 --> 00:02:43.689 lager state. Lager state. That's the term for 00:02:43.689 --> 00:02:46.229 a fossil site that preserves soft tissue, right? 00:02:46.289 --> 00:02:49.509 Like eyes and guts. Exactly. It's incredibly 00:02:49.509 --> 00:02:52.750 rare. Usually all the soft bits just rot away. 00:02:52.949 --> 00:02:55.710 But here we get preservation of eyes, antenna, 00:02:56.050 --> 00:02:58.710 you name it. And when Patterson and his team 00:02:58.710 --> 00:03:01.110 looked really closely at these amazing specimens 00:03:01.110 --> 00:03:06.099 in 2023, they realized the anatomy just... It 00:03:06.099 --> 00:03:08.439 didn't fit the hunter profile at all. So they 00:03:08.439 --> 00:03:10.479 gave it the boot. Kicked it right out of the 00:03:10.479 --> 00:03:12.680 genus Anomalocaris. They did. They established 00:03:12.680 --> 00:03:15.960 a new genus, Echidnacaris. And this is a big 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:17.599 deal because it wasn't just a name change. It 00:03:17.599 --> 00:03:20.219 was a family change. They moved it from the Anomalocariidae 00:03:20.219 --> 00:03:22.560 to the Temesiocariidae. Okay, okay. Let's break 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:25.039 that down. Temesiocariidae. Can we think of this 00:03:25.039 --> 00:03:27.500 like, I don't know, sports teams? That's a great 00:03:27.500 --> 00:03:29.680 analogy, actually. Think of the Anomalocariidae 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:32.479 as team hunter. These are the active predators 00:03:32.479 --> 00:03:34.719 with those big grasping claws made to puncture 00:03:34.719 --> 00:03:37.500 things. Echidna caris used to be on that team 00:03:37.500 --> 00:03:40.039 roster, but the new analysis showed it actually 00:03:40.039 --> 00:03:42.780 belongs on team sifter, the temesio caridids. 00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:45.159 Team sifter. So instead of chasing down prey, 00:03:45.419 --> 00:03:48.360 these guys are suspension feeders. Exactly. And 00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:50.680 that distinction changes everything about how 00:03:50.680 --> 00:03:52.840 we see the fossil. It's like finding a skeleton 00:03:52.840 --> 00:03:55.479 you thought belonged to a wolf, but then realizing 00:03:55.479 --> 00:03:58.060 the teeth are actually for grinding plants. You're 00:03:58.060 --> 00:03:59.680 not looking at a carnivore anymore. You're looking 00:03:59.680 --> 00:04:03.199 at a panda. A giant aquatic spiny panda. Yeah. 00:04:03.340 --> 00:04:04.919 Let's talk about the size, though, because giant 00:04:04.919 --> 00:04:07.139 is relative. Yeah. If I saw this thing swimming 00:04:07.139 --> 00:04:08.780 today, I'd freak out, but I wouldn't think it 00:04:08.780 --> 00:04:13.080 was, you know. In a modern context, no. The fossils 00:04:13.080 --> 00:04:15.860 suggest Echidnacurus was somewhere between 33 00:04:15.860 --> 00:04:20.740 and 49 centimeters long. So roughly 1 .1 to 1 00:04:20.740 --> 00:04:23.100 .6 feet. Which is basically a large baguette. 00:04:23.180 --> 00:04:26.259 A large armored baguette, yes. But you have to 00:04:26.259 --> 00:04:29.160 put it in context. In the Cambrian, most life 00:04:29.160 --> 00:04:32.750 was tiny. centimeters, maybe millimeters. If 00:04:32.750 --> 00:04:34.550 you're a trilobite the size of a quarter, Echidna 00:04:34.550 --> 00:04:37.490 Currus is an absolute leviathan. It was one of 00:04:37.490 --> 00:04:39.170 the biggest things in the ocean. Right. It's 00:04:39.170 --> 00:04:41.810 the school bus in a world of bicycles. And the 00:04:41.810 --> 00:04:44.050 most defining part of it, the part that really 00:04:44.050 --> 00:04:47.110 screams team sifter, is the front end, those 00:04:47.110 --> 00:04:50.310 frontal appendages. This is the key. These are 00:04:50.310 --> 00:04:53.069 what separate the hunters from the sifters. In 00:04:53.069 --> 00:04:56.170 Echinocaris, these limbs were massive, like 17 00:04:56.170 --> 00:04:58.509 centimeters long. That's almost half the body 00:04:58.509 --> 00:05:00.810 length just in its arms. And they weren't just 00:05:00.810 --> 00:05:03.189 long sticks. I was looking at the diagrams and 00:05:03.189 --> 00:05:06.110 the structure is just, it's so intricate. It 00:05:06.110 --> 00:05:09.149 says they had 13 segments or patamers. 13 segments, 00:05:09.269 --> 00:05:11.189 yep. And look at the base of those limbs. The 00:05:11.189 --> 00:05:13.430 first few segments were way taller than they 00:05:13.430 --> 00:05:16.189 were wide. They were thick. Right. Really robust. 00:05:17.110 --> 00:05:20.399 Extremely. Which suggests... they needed a really 00:05:20.399 --> 00:05:22.519 strong anchor for what was happening further 00:05:22.519 --> 00:05:25.800 down the limb. Because from segment 2 to 12, 00:05:25.959 --> 00:05:29.199 it gets very, very complicated. These segments 00:05:29.199 --> 00:05:32.139 had endites, long spines that curved backward. 00:05:32.439 --> 00:05:34.579 But it's not just spines, is it? This is where 00:05:34.579 --> 00:05:36.959 it got really wild for me. It's not a comb. It's 00:05:36.959 --> 00:05:39.910 like a fractal. That is the perfect word for 00:05:39.910 --> 00:05:42.829 it. Fractal. The primary spines, the endites, 00:05:42.949 --> 00:05:45.110 they have their own spines. The paper calls them 00:05:45.110 --> 00:05:47.889 auxiliary spines. So you have a spine. And on 00:05:47.889 --> 00:05:50.009 that spine are even smaller spines. It's spines 00:05:50.009 --> 00:05:52.910 all the way down. Exactly right. Imagine a fern 00:05:52.910 --> 00:05:55.170 front. You have the main stem, then the little 00:05:55.170 --> 00:05:57.329 leaves coming off the side. Now make that out 00:05:57.329 --> 00:06:00.470 of hardened sheeton. When Echidnacurus held these 00:06:00.470 --> 00:06:03.509 two appendages together, they didn't form a grasping 00:06:03.509 --> 00:06:06.850 claw. They formed a mesh. A basket. A biological 00:06:06.850 --> 00:06:09.850 sieve. The spacing between those little auxiliary 00:06:09.850 --> 00:06:13.069 spines was incredibly tight. This wasn't designed 00:06:13.069 --> 00:06:15.490 to grab a wriggling trilobite. It was designed 00:06:15.490 --> 00:06:18.189 to trap tiny particles from the water. Okay, 00:06:18.250 --> 00:06:20.569 so let's connect this to its lifestyle. We've 00:06:20.569 --> 00:06:22.930 got this foot -and -a -half -long creature cruising 00:06:22.930 --> 00:06:26.069 through the ocean. It's not dashing after prey 00:06:26.069 --> 00:06:29.709 like its cousin Anomalocaris. It's just... Sweeping. 00:06:29.709 --> 00:06:31.730 Sweeping is a good way to put it. Or maybe just 00:06:31.730 --> 00:06:34.389 holding the baskets out into the current. The 00:06:34.389 --> 00:06:36.550 water flows through, but the plankton, the organic 00:06:36.550 --> 00:06:38.990 debris, any tiny swimming things, they get stuck. 00:06:39.269 --> 00:06:41.089 It's the difference between a spear and a coffee 00:06:41.089 --> 00:06:43.850 filter. Anomalocaris is out there with a spear, 00:06:44.089 --> 00:06:47.110 trying to snag dinner one bite at a time. Echidnacaris 00:06:47.110 --> 00:06:49.810 has a coffee filter strapped to its face. And 00:06:49.810 --> 00:06:51.730 that's a brilliant strategy. We see this all 00:06:51.730 --> 00:06:54.029 the time in evolution. Look at whales. The ancestors 00:06:54.029 --> 00:06:58.160 of whales were toothed predators, right? But 00:06:58.160 --> 00:07:01.600 the biggest whales today, blow whales, humpbacks, 00:07:01.819 --> 00:07:04.319 they're filter feeders. They realize there's 00:07:04.319 --> 00:07:06.360 a huge amount of energy just sitting there at 00:07:06.360 --> 00:07:08.100 the bottom of the food chain. It's the lazy genius 00:07:08.100 --> 00:07:11.139 move. Yeah. Why chase one fast fish? when you 00:07:11.139 --> 00:07:12.939 can just open your mouth and swallow a million 00:07:12.939 --> 00:07:15.560 slow calories. It's an energetic trade -off. 00:07:15.639 --> 00:07:18.259 You trade high -risk, high -reward hunting for 00:07:18.259 --> 00:07:21.120 low -risk, high -volume grazing. And Echidna 00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:23.259 Cara seems to be one of the very first animals 00:07:23.259 --> 00:07:26.439 to really master this on a large scale. I do 00:07:26.439 --> 00:07:28.420 want to ask about the mouth, though. Because 00:07:28.420 --> 00:07:30.740 even if you're eating soup, you still need machinery 00:07:30.740 --> 00:07:33.100 to get into your gut. The source mentioned an 00:07:33.100 --> 00:07:36.220 oral cone. Yes, the oral cone. It's a classic 00:07:36.220 --> 00:07:39.779 radiodont feature. In Echinocaris, it was triradial, 00:07:39.779 --> 00:07:42.100 so shaped kind of like a Mercedes -Benz star, 00:07:42.240 --> 00:07:45.180 with three large plates. And those plates were 00:07:45.180 --> 00:07:47.759 covered in tubercules. Tubercules, bumps. Hard, 00:07:47.819 --> 00:07:50.560 bumpy nodes, yeah. So even though it wasn't crushing 00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:53.740 shells, it needed a robust way to process the 00:07:53.740 --> 00:07:56.300 slurry it was collecting. It wasn't just passively 00:07:56.300 --> 00:07:59.259 swallowing. It was likely grinding or manipulating 00:07:59.259 --> 00:08:01.980 that food before it went down. So we have this 00:08:01.980 --> 00:08:06.740 picture now, big, armored, peaceful, cruising 00:08:06.740 --> 00:08:09.279 along with its fur and frond baskets, filtering 00:08:09.279 --> 00:08:13.240 out plankton. It sounds almost serene. It does 00:08:13.240 --> 00:08:15.620 sound serene until you realize where it might 00:08:15.620 --> 00:08:17.220 have been living and what it was using to see. 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:20.589 Right. The eyes. I feel like we've been burying 00:08:20.589 --> 00:08:22.730 the lead here because the stats on the eyes are 00:08:22.730 --> 00:08:25.269 just mind -blowing. When I read 13 ,000 lenses, 00:08:25.389 --> 00:08:27.790 I had to double -check that number. It is a staggering 00:08:27.790 --> 00:08:29.910 number. And again, thanks to the Emu Bay Shell, 00:08:30.050 --> 00:08:32.490 we have incredible detail. First off, their placement. 00:08:32.929 --> 00:08:35.289 Unlike some other radiodonts that had eyes on 00:08:35.289 --> 00:08:37.269 stalks like little periscopes, these were attached 00:08:37.269 --> 00:08:39.570 directly to the head. Flush with the skull, basically. 00:08:39.570 --> 00:08:41.950 More or less. And they were reinforced with these 00:08:41.950 --> 00:08:44.669 sclerotized structures. Basically eye armor, 00:08:44.789 --> 00:08:47.519 but the size. The size is what gets you. These 00:08:47.519 --> 00:08:49.600 eyes were over three centimeters in diameter. 00:08:49.899 --> 00:08:53.019 Wait, 1 .2 inches? That's an eye the size of 00:08:53.019 --> 00:08:55.639 a golf ball on a creature that's maybe the size 00:08:55.639 --> 00:08:58.200 of a house cat. Correct. And these were compound 00:08:58.200 --> 00:09:01.059 eyes like a dragonfly's, made up of thousands 00:09:01.059 --> 00:09:04.860 of tiny units. A modern housefly has maybe three, 00:09:05.059 --> 00:09:08.919 maybe 6 ,000 lenses. Echidna caris had over 13 00:09:08.919 --> 00:09:11.820 ,000. That's high -definition vision, or at least 00:09:11.820 --> 00:09:14.580 an incredibly wide field of view. But here's 00:09:14.580 --> 00:09:17.629 the thing that bugs me. Pun intended. Eyes are 00:09:17.629 --> 00:09:20.779 expensive. biologically expensive. You've hit 00:09:20.779 --> 00:09:23.080 on a crucial point. Neural tissue, brain and 00:09:23.080 --> 00:09:26.779 eyes is metabolically just. It's a huge energy 00:09:26.779 --> 00:09:29.379 drain to grow and maintain. You do not evolve 00:09:29.379 --> 00:09:33.100 giant complex eyes with 13 ,000 lenses unless 00:09:33.100 --> 00:09:35.480 you absolutely need them to survive. Exactly. 00:09:35.580 --> 00:09:37.639 If you're just a filter feeder, if you're a swimming 00:09:37.639 --> 00:09:39.740 room cleaning a plankton, why do you need sniper 00:09:39.740 --> 00:09:42.299 grade optics? Your food is literally everywhere. 00:09:42.559 --> 00:09:44.899 That is the paradox. Why the huge investment? 00:09:45.080 --> 00:09:47.279 And the researchers, Patterson and his colleagues, 00:09:47.399 --> 00:09:49.620 they have a really compelling hypothesis. It's 00:09:49.620 --> 00:09:52.120 not about seeing far. It's about seeing in the 00:09:52.120 --> 00:09:54.320 dark. Night view. Essentially. The individual 00:09:54.320 --> 00:09:56.940 lenses in the eyes of Echidna Carus were huge, 00:09:57.179 --> 00:10:01.279 some over 335 micrometers wide. And in optics, 00:10:01.460 --> 00:10:04.419 a larger lens captures more light. By having 00:10:04.419 --> 00:10:08.360 these massive lenses, and so many of them, Echidnokaris 00:10:08.360 --> 00:10:10.360 was building a light bucket. It was designed 00:10:10.360 --> 00:10:13.299 to capture every single possible photon. Yes. 00:10:13.600 --> 00:10:15.700 This suggests that Echidnokaris wasn't hanging 00:10:15.700 --> 00:10:17.720 out in those sunny, shallow reefs we talked about. 00:10:17.980 --> 00:10:20.120 It was probably living in the twilight zone, 00:10:20.340 --> 00:10:22.740 deeper waters where sunlight barely penetrates, 00:10:22.840 --> 00:10:26.120 or maybe in incredibly murky, silty water. See, 00:10:26.139 --> 00:10:28.700 that changes the vibe of the whole story. We 00:10:28.700 --> 00:10:31.419 went from a serene graze in a sunlit ocean to 00:10:31.419 --> 00:10:34.220 something much moodier. Imagine being down there 00:10:34.220 --> 00:10:37.539 500 million years ago. It's pitch black. But 00:10:37.539 --> 00:10:39.620 a kid in Curris can see you. It paints a picture 00:10:39.620 --> 00:10:41.860 of a much more complex ecosystem, doesn't it? 00:10:41.940 --> 00:10:44.019 We often think of the Cambrian as simple, predator 00:10:44.019 --> 00:10:46.559 eats prey. But here we have niche partitioning 00:10:46.559 --> 00:10:48.200 based on light levels. You have the hunters in 00:10:48.200 --> 00:10:50.259 the light and these giant sifters down in the 00:10:50.259 --> 00:10:52.279 dark. But I want to push on that, because if 00:10:52.279 --> 00:10:54.019 it invested that much energy into night vision, 00:10:54.200 --> 00:10:57.039 it can't have been just to find plankton. Plankton 00:10:57.039 --> 00:10:59.440 clouds aren't exactly hiding. No, they aren't. 00:10:59.440 --> 00:11:02.750 And this brings us to the... Well, the more unsettling 00:11:02.750 --> 00:11:04.830 implication of those eyes. The defense budget. 00:11:05.070 --> 00:11:08.570 Exactly. In nature, you need good eyes for two 00:11:08.570 --> 00:11:12.450 reasons. To find food, or to avoid becoming food. 00:11:13.409 --> 00:11:16.190 Iphigenocarus was a slow -moving, peaceful filter 00:11:16.190 --> 00:11:19.029 feeder in the dark. It was a sitting duck. A 00:11:19.029 --> 00:11:21.070 sitting deck that tastes like shrink. A large, 00:11:21.129 --> 00:11:23.529 protein -rich target. The fact that it evolved 00:11:23.529 --> 00:11:26.409 and maintained these high -performance eyes suggests 00:11:26.409 --> 00:11:29.149 that the deep, dark waters of the Cambrian were 00:11:29.149 --> 00:11:32.450 not empty. They were dangerous. It needed to 00:11:32.450 --> 00:11:34.629 see a predator coming from a long, long way off. 00:11:34.850 --> 00:11:37.490 That is a terrifying thought. We think of the 00:11:37.490 --> 00:11:39.710 monsters like Anomalocaris ruling the surface. 00:11:40.070 --> 00:11:41.950 But this implies there is something else, or 00:11:41.950 --> 00:11:44.370 maybe Anomalocaris itself, hunting in the deep. 00:11:44.679 --> 00:11:46.879 It implies an arms race was happening everywhere. 00:11:47.179 --> 00:11:49.679 Even in the niches that seem safe, like suspension 00:11:49.679 --> 00:11:52.840 feeding, the pressure was on. Echidnokaris couldn't 00:11:52.840 --> 00:11:55.299 afford to be blind. It had to be hyper -aware. 00:11:55.620 --> 00:11:57.620 It's just fascinating how we can pull all of 00:11:57.620 --> 00:12:00.220 this from a rock. We started with a name change, 00:12:00.440 --> 00:12:04.000 a bureaucratic shuffle. But when you follow the 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:06.559 threads, the fractal spines, the golf ball eyes, 00:12:06.759 --> 00:12:10.500 you reconstruct a thriller movie set in a prehistoric 00:12:10.500 --> 00:12:13.769 ocean. That's the power of paleontology. The 00:12:13.769 --> 00:12:16.070 taxonomy, the naming, that's just the filing 00:12:16.070 --> 00:12:19.350 system. The real science isn't asking, why does 00:12:19.350 --> 00:12:22.750 it look like this? And what did that cost? That 00:12:22.750 --> 00:12:25.470 leads you to the behavior and the environment. 00:12:25.730 --> 00:12:27.309 So let's just wrap up what we've learned about 00:12:27.309 --> 00:12:30.210 our friend Echidna caris. We learned that radiodont 00:12:30.210 --> 00:12:32.049 family is way more diverse than we thought. It 00:12:32.049 --> 00:12:34.070 wasn't just hunters. It was team hunter and team 00:12:34.070 --> 00:12:36.549 sifter. We learned that Echidna caris was a pioneer 00:12:36.549 --> 00:12:39.889 of the whale lifestyle, growing huge, relatively 00:12:39.889 --> 00:12:42.129 speaking, to feed on the microscopic food whip. 00:12:42.440 --> 00:12:44.419 And we learned it did this with a toolkit of 00:12:44.419 --> 00:12:47.019 these fractal spined arms and a visual system 00:12:47.019 --> 00:12:50.059 that rivals modern insects, all optimized for 00:12:50.059 --> 00:12:52.519 a life in the shadows. It really challenges that 00:12:52.519 --> 00:12:54.340 whole idea of primitive life. There's nothing 00:12:54.340 --> 00:12:57.440 primitive about an eye with 13 ,000 lenses. That's 00:12:57.440 --> 00:12:59.700 advanced engineering. Highly advanced. And it 00:12:59.700 --> 00:13:01.860 happened half a billion years ago. It shows that 00:13:01.860 --> 00:13:04.899 once complex life got going, it didn't wait around. 00:13:05.019 --> 00:13:08.480 It just exploded into every possible niche almost 00:13:08.480 --> 00:13:10.700 immediately. And it leaves us with that lingering 00:13:10.700 --> 00:13:14.759 question. The one I can't shake. We know what 00:13:14.759 --> 00:13:17.820 Echidna Caris was eating, but we still don't 00:13:17.820 --> 00:13:20.519 know for sure what it was watching out for. That's 00:13:20.519 --> 00:13:22.879 the mystery that remains in the rock. If you 00:13:22.879 --> 00:13:24.960 need military -grade night vision to survive 00:13:24.960 --> 00:13:27.539 the Cambrian night, there must have been something 00:13:27.539 --> 00:13:30.799 truly scary hiding in the dark with you. Thanks 00:13:30.799 --> 00:13:32.620 for diving deep with us today. Always a pleasure. 00:13:32.820 --> 00:13:33.559 Catch you on the next one.