ArticleScientific reports2017
Earth's oldest 'Bobbit worm' - gigantism in a Devonian eunicidan polychaete.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Polychaete annelids from the earliest Cambrian Period.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The 20-million-year old lair of an ambush-predatory worm preserved in northeast Taiwan.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Micro-computed tomography characterization of tissue engineering scaffolds: effects of pixel size and rotation step.Journal of materials science. Materials in medicine · 2017Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
Whilst the fossil record of polychaete worms extends to the early Cambrian, much data on this group derive from microfossils known as scolecodonts. These are sclerotized jaw elements, which generally range from 0.1-2 mm in size, and which, in contrast to the soft-body anatomy, have good preservation potential and a continuous fossil record. Here we describe a new eunicidan polychaete, Websteroprion armstrongi gen. et sp. nov., based primarily on monospecific bedding plane assemblages from the Lower-Middle Devonian Kwataboahegan Formation of Ontario, Canada. The specimens are preserved mainly as three-dimensional moulds in the calcareous host rock, with only parts of the original sclerotized jaw walls occasionally present. This new taxon has a unique morphology and is characterized by an unexpected combination of features seen in several different Palaeozoic polychaete families. Websteroprion armstrongi was a raptorial feeder and possessed the largest jaws recorded in polychaetes from the fossil record, with maxillae reaching over one centimetre in length. Total body length of the species is estimated to have reached over one metre, which is comparable to that of extant 'giant eunicid' species colloquially referred to as 'Bobbit worms'. This demonstrates that polychaete gigantism was already a phenomenon in the Palaeozoic, some 400 million years ago.
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