#utaurora

[bowelfly]

5th batch of bug doodle commissions DONE

i'll probably raise the price to $5 per doodle soon because i keep accidentally putting more work into these than i'm supposed to but in the meantime you can still throw any multiple of $4 at my ko-fi to get that many bug doodles in return

[franzanth]

Utaurora comosa, the second known opabiniid

This fossil from Utah is named after Aurora (Roman goddess of dawn who turned her lover into a cicada – a modern arthropod).

The species name comosa reflects the ‘hairy’ appearance of the dorsal surface, and tail fan composed of many ‘leaves’.

This artwork was done last year but never posted here. I thought it’s appropriate to do it now, since I also just posted Mieridduryn.

Read the paper

[nekoisopods]

Utaurora (Feb. 2022)

[buried-in-the-archives]

[utaurora]

hmm...

[statecryptids]

For Pride Month this year, I made a couple of Pride-themed Radiodonts- or Anomalocarids, if you prefer.

This first one is LGBTQ+ PRIDE ANOMALOCARIS CANADENSIS in the colors of the most recent Pride flag.

TRANS PRIDE UTAURORA COMOSA. Utaurora (a real prehistoric creature, not one of my speculative designs) was a close relative of the more well-known Opabina. Its back was covered with filamentous gills, giving it a fuzzy appearance. It's name is a portmanteau of Utah, where it was discovered, and Aurora, the Roman goddess of the Dawn, who turned her lover into an insect. The name was chosen because opabinids- and radiodonts in general- are believed to be close to the origins of arthropods.

NONBINARY AEGIROCASSIS BENMOULAI

Aegirocassis was part of a group of radiodonts called hurdiidae. It was a giant filter-feeder that used its long head shield and balleen-like Great Appendages to sift plankton from the water.

Available as stickers here:

And available here on shirts:

https://www.teepublic.com/user/nocturnalsea

[eliasdrid]

9 people I'd like to get to know better !

tagged by @panicbones o7

last song: Gentle Goodbye - Whoopie Cat

favourite colour: blue (mainly) + black, silver, purple.

last movie/tv show: Last movie I watched was Van Helsing (2004) which I love to bits and I've seen many times, I like the visuals and the vfx hold up pretty well? Last show (that I finished) was Ultraman Orb (2016) which was my first Ultraman show :>

sweet/spicy/savory?: sweet (& savory)

last thing i googled: cobra

current obsession: tokusatsu (always and forever: robots + sci fi)

tag nine people: @seeyouguyslater, @redacted-metallum, @orowyrm, @gaydinobot, @magicalgirlsirin, @utaurora and I feel like I'm forgetting everyone else ever so if you see this and we're mutuals you're invited to participate ^^

[miraphoenix]

Last year, a paper on a new opabiniid, Utaurora comosa, came out right around my birthday.

This year? This year, it's a paper on the new largest species of cave fish! Neolissochilus pnar, a surprisingly-large cave carp, from Meghalaya, Northeast India.

I like this trend, this is a good trend.

[alphynix]

Ever since the bizarre anatomy of Opabinia was first recognized in the 1970s, it's been a persistently unique "weird wonder" of the Cambrian period. Over the decades we've figured out that it was an early type of arthropod in an evolutionary position between lobopodians and radiodonts, but this whole time it's still been sitting there alone as the only known representative of a weird stem-lineage with no other known close relatives.

…Until now!

A fossil from the Wheeler Shale in Utah, USA (~507 million years ago) that was originally thought to be a tiny radiodont has been re-studied, and now we finally have another member of the opabiniid family: Utaurora comosa.

Only about 3cm long (1.2"), Utaurora had 15 pairs of swimming flaps along the sides of its body, and a tail region with a 7-part fan and a pair of serrated spines. Hair-like gill blades covered both its back and the bases of its swimming flaps, and although its head region was poorly preserved it probably had an arrangement of 5 eyes and a long flexible claw-tipped proboscis similar to that of Opabinia.

Its discovery extends both the geographical and temporal known range of opabiniids, and suggests that their continued scarcity in other Cambrian fossil sites compared to other soft-bodied arthropods may simply be because they were just incredibly rare animals in those habitats at the time.

———

Nix Illustration | Tumblr | Twitter | Patreon

[extinctworld-ua]

Utaurora

Utaurora — вимерлий рід опабініїд, які були химерними стовбуровими членистоногими, тісно спорідненими зі справжніми членистоногими та радіодонтами. Скам’янілості тварини походять з кембрійського періоду штату Юта.

Повний текст на сайті "Вимерлий світ":

https://extinctworld.in.ua/utaurora/

[tracedconnections-blog]

“Well, look at how far you’ve come.”

          She couldn’t help but smile at this. Smile, truly smile. Not the way she had thought she could before. Not with that way her heart-less nature had left her. She no longer felt the echo of an emotion- she had a heart all her own that could enjoy this moment. So she smiled and looked to her companion- friend, really. 

          Despite all he had been through, all that she had put him through inadvertently too, he was still smiling. He was still solid and devoted. And he had apparently pushed for her to come back. She owed something of this existence to him. It was a strange feeling- she was okay with knowing she owed him a great deal.

          His words too pointed at these thoughts. Before, she would have dwelt upon this scenario for a while, drawing herself deeper and deeper into her own complexes. The scenarios she made for herself would manifest on paper, taken from her mind and made into something she could conquer. But now she could feel, could work through it all; and best of all, she had the choice, the will, to do so. Truly she had come a long way from being trapped in a castle.

          “It’s... been a long time coming, I think.” She looked ahead again as they made their way via the gummi ship. “I don’t know if I’m really ready.”

[cilginfizikcilervbi]

Kambriyen Dönemin Tuhaf Canlısı Artık Tek Değil 

Kambriyen Dönemin Tuhaf Canlısı Artık Tek Değil  Arkaya bakan ağası, 5 gözü ve burnunun yerindeki pençe uçlu hortumu ile Kambriyen döneminin en tuhaf canlısı olan Opabinia regalis, şimdiye kadar akrabası bulunamamış ender bir türdü.  Kambriyen Dönemin Tuhaf Canlısı Artık Tek Değil Opabinia regalis Utaurora comosa, Opabinia’dan bir kaç milyon yıl önce Kuzey Amerika’da yaşamış dikenli kuyruklu bir…

[weheartstims]

Utaurora cosmosa stimboard? She deserves a big welcome to the Opabiniidae family I think :] Anything watery for stims would be great! - Mina (treehouse)

Utaurora cosmosa with water!

🌊|💧|🌊 💧|🌊|💧 🌊|💧|🌊

[cerebrodigital]

Hallan artrópodo con 5 ojos y boca ‘hacia’ atrás, extinto hace 500 millones de años

Se trata del primer ejemplar del taxón ‘Opabinia’ descubierto hace más de 100 años.

Encontraron un extraño animal de cinco ojos y boca hacia atrás. Desde hacía 500 millones de años se encontraba extinto. Se trata de un espécimen marino que vivió entre los periodos Cámbrico y el Devónico. Si bien el descubrimiento sucedió en el 2008, hace poco se detectó que se trataba del ‘Utaurora comosa’, el primer ejemplar del taxón ‘Opabinia’ descubierto en más de 100 años.

La investigación que llevó a determinar que efectivamente se trataba del animal estuvo a cargo de un grupo de expertos de Harvard. Según informaron, fue encontrado en la formación Wheeler del estado de Utah (Estados Unidos) en un yacimiento que data del Cámbrico medio. En el año en que lo descubrieron pensaron que se trataba de un radiodonto, aunque se identificaron algunas irregularidades que los llevaron a cambiar de opinión.

  “Basándonos solo en la morfología, se podría argumentar que el ‘Utaurora’ es un radiodonte raro y también recuperar el concepto de dinocárido. Pero nuestro conjunto de datos y análisis filogenéticos apoyaron al ‘Utaurora’ como un opabínido en el 68% de los árboles (filogenéticos) recuperados al analizar los datos, pero solo en el 0,04% para un radiodonto”, explicó Stephen Pates, coautor de la investigación.

Cómo se dieron cuenta de que se trataba de un ‘Utaurora comosa’

Fue Pates quien descubrió que el espécimen no se ajustaba a las características de un verdadero radionto. El científico estudiaba la diversidad de este grupo de animales cuando notó “que estaba más estrechamente relacionado con Opabinia. Seguimos con más pruebas para interrogar ese resultado utilizando diferentes modelos de evolución y conjuntos de datos para visualizar los diferentes tipos de relaciones que pudo tener este fósil”.

“‘Wolderful life’ y la descripción de estos fósiles ocurrió antes de los paradigmas evolutivos actuales. Las similitudes entre ‘Opabinia’ y ‘Anomalocaris’ aún no se comprendían realmente”, agregó Jo Wolfe, otras de las autoras del estudio. Ahora sabemos que estos animales representan etapas extintas de la evolución que están relacionadas con los artrópodos modernos. Y tenemos herramientas más allá de la comparación cualitativa de los rasgos morfológicos para una ubicación más definitiva dentro del árbol de la vida animal”, completó la investigadora.

  FUENTE   1

  Este post Hallan artrópodo con 5 ojos y boca ‘hacia’ atrás, extinto hace 500 millones de años apareció en Cerebro Digital.

from Cerebro Digital https://ift.tt/xGPeDJ4

[typhlonectes]

New opabiniid diversifies the weirdest wonders of the euarthropod stem group

Pates et al.

Abstract

Once considered ‘weird wonders’ of the Cambrian, the emblematic Burgess Shale animals Anomalocaris and Opabinia are now recognized as lower stem-group euarthropods and have provided crucial data for constraining the polarity of key morphological characters in the group. 

Anomalocaris and its relatives (radiodonts) had worldwide distribution and survived until at least the Devonian. However, despite intense study, Opabinia remains the only formally described opabiniid to date. Here we reinterpret a fossil from the Wheeler Formation of Utah as a new opabiniid, Utaurora comosa nov. gen. et sp. 

By visualizing the sample of phylogenetic topologies in treespace, our results fortify support for the position of U. comosa beyond the nodal support traditionally applied. Our phylogenetic evidence expands opabiniids to multiple Cambrian stages. 

Our results underscore the power of treespace visualization for resolving imperfectly preserved fossils and expanding the known diversity and spatio-temporal ranges within the euarthropod lower stem group.

Read the paper here:  

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.2093

[dykegeology]

NEW CAMBRIAN ANIMAL WITH 5 EYES DROPPED https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.2093

Illustration of Utaurora by Franz Anthony