The 20‑million‑year old lair of an ambush‑predatory worm preserved in northeast Taiwan
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NATURE RESEARCH
Fecha
2021Referencia bibliográfica
Pan, YY., Nara, M., Löwemark, L. et al. The 20-million-year old lair of an ambush-predatory worm preserved in northeast Taiwan. Sci Rep 11, 1174 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79311-0
Resumen
The feeding behavior of the giant ambush-predator “Bobbit worm” (Eunice aphroditois) is spectacular.
They hide in their burrows until they explode upwards grabbing unsuspecting prey with a snap of
their powerful jaws. The still living prey are then pulled into the sediment for consumption. Although
predatory polychaetes have existed since the early Paleozoic, their bodies comprise mainly soft tissue,
resulting in a very incomplete fossil record, and virtually nothing is known about their burrows and
behavior beneath the seafoor. Here we use morphological, sedimentological, and geochemical data
from Miocene strata in northeast Taiwan to erect a new ichnogenus, Pennichnus. This trace fossil
consists of an up to 2 m long, 2–3 cm in diameter, L-shaped burrow with distinct feather-like structures
around the upper shaft. A comparison of Pennichnus to biological analogs strongly suggests that this
new ichnogenus is associated with ambush-predatory worms that lived about 20 million years ago.