Stringing Along

Bizarre fossil hauled its offspring around "like kites"

20:48 05 April 2016

Scientists have discovered a 430 million-year-old creature that dragged its offspring around on strings like kites.

 

The creature, which scientists are now calling “kite runner”, had ten capsules tethered to its back carrying its offspring, which are all at different stages of development.

 

Scientists have described their discovery in the journal PNAS as eyeless, many-legged, 1cm animal that is not directly related to any living species.

 

David Legg, a palaeontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, said: "There isn't an animal today that it's essentially related to,"

 

"It's what we refer to as being on a stem lineage. So it belongs to a group that would have evolved and diversified before the modern groups did."

 

Meanwhile, co-author Derek Briggs, from Yale University in the US, said: "Nothing is known today that attaches the young by threads to its upper surface.”

 

"Modern crustaceans employ a variety of strategies to protect their eggs and embryos from predators - attaching them to the limbs, holding them under the carapace, or enclosing them within a special pouch until they are old enough to be released - but this example is unique.

 

"It shows that arthropods evolved a variety of brooding strategies beyond those around today - perhaps this strategy was less successful and became extinct."