If you have never heard about Stanleycaris hirpex, there’s no need to worry. It’s the name of a creature that lived long ago, and it probably didn’t hear about you, either.
After exploring the Burgess Shale, meaning a formation from British Columbia’s Canadian Rockies, researchers at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto discovered the incredibly-well preserved fossils of Stanleycaris hirpex, according to livescience.com. The brain of the unusual creature was found intact. We’re talking about an ocean predator of roughly 20 centimeters in length that lived about 500 million years ago, and not just an ordinary one. The creature was featuring three eyes, a weird shape for its body structure, and more.
Joseph Moysiuk, who led a study that described the fossils, explained as livescience.com quotes:
What makes this find so remarkable is that we have dozens of specimens showing the remains of the brain and other elements of the nervous system, and they’re incredibly well preserved and show really fine details.
He continues, as the same source quotes:
Before this, there had only been a few other finds of fossilized brains, particularly from the Cambrian period, but this is still something that is quite rare, and it’s only something that’s been observed in the last 10 years or so,
Most of the species where we’ve seen fossilized brains, there are only one or two specimens available.
Finding even a well-preserved eye in the fossil was indeed a surprise for the scientists. They believe that the eye helped the creature with its orientation, and it could have even played an important role in the animal’s rapid and precise movements. Despite its small size, Stanleycaris hirpex was pretty agile, and it was feared by other creatures.
The new study appeared in Current Biology.