Ancient Penis Worms Used to Inhabit the Grand Canyon

Penis Worms had been discovered within the Bright Angel Formation within the Grand Canyon (Photo: ROBYN BECK/AFP through Getty Images)

Scientists researching the Grand Canyon just lately discovered fossils of a never-before-seen species of the so-called penis worm, an animal which, as discerning readers could have guessed, bears a exceptional resemblance to a sure piece of human genitalia.

The new species, known as Kraytdraco spectatus, was found by Giovanni Mussini, a paleontologist and doctoral pupil from the University of Cambridge, whereas he was main a analysis expedition down the Colorado River in 2023. He revealed his findings on July 23 in the journal Science Advances. 

Over a interval of a number of weeks, Mussini floated the Colorado in a dinghy with different scientists, scraping rock samples from the partitions of the Grand Canyon, particularly a layer of shale generally known as the Bright Angel Formation. Mussini was in search of proof of life from the center Cambrian interval, roughly 500 million years in the past. Upon returning to Cambridge, he dissolved his rock samples in hydrofluoric acid to seek out the fossils inside.

“Collection itself is not too challenging,” Mussini told SFGATE. “Sometimes you are on a cliff, you know, quite exposed. You risk falling down. But what is actually quite time consuming is the digestion process, fizzing up all this material in acid and finding out whether you picked something good. That took quite a few months.”

Among Mussini’s findings had been the anticipated mollusks and crustaceans, but additionally a completely undiscovered species of penis worm.

Based on its fossilized stays, Mussini and his colleagues consider the penis worm was between six and eight inches lengthy, and like all penis worms, ate utilizing a retractable proboscis, just like the xenomorphs in Ridley Scott’s Alien movies. This proboscis was lined with twin round layers of tooth, one laborious and tough, one other smooth and feather-like.

At the suggestion of a colleague, a die-hard Star Wars fan, Mussini named his discovery Kraytdraco spectatus, after a burrowing, desert-dwelling monster known as the krayt dragon, which seems within the spin-off Disney+ present The Mandalorian.

“The peculiar thing about it is that it combines these heavy duty scraping teeth, we think, with these more delicate, more feathery looking teeth with branching filaments,” Mussini mentioned. “We think this kind of combined apparatus suggests some division of labor.” Mussini and his colleagues consider the sharper tooth would first be used to rake meals from the mud and sand, after which the second layer of sentimental, feathery tooth would act as a filter, separating the worm’s meals from the substrate.

Though it’s predominantly dry and arid at this time, throughout the Cambrian interval, the Grand Canyon was a shallow sea, and a hotbed of liveable and resource-rich environments. “Most of our other exceptional Cambrian fossilization sites tend to record ecological backwaters,” Mussini defined, “places that were poor in oxygen or nutrients or food availability. Whereas in the Grand Canyon, you had this abundance of photosynthesis going on. A lot of oxygen meant animals could invest more [resources] into producing the kind of sophisticated adaptations that we see in the fossils we described.”

Scientifically, penis worms are known as “priapulids,” a nod to the Greek god of fertility, Priapus. All worms within the phylum Priapulida are “unsegmented,” which means their our bodies aren’t divided into repeating sections or segments, like an earthworm, and are as an alternative clean and spherical. They are marine creatures, residing in mud and shallow water. Some feed on different small residing matter like algae, plankton, arthropods, and different worms, whereas others merely eat detritus: free, lifeless natural materials within the sediment.

Priapulids had been extremely various in prehistoric occasions, and had been one of many dominant predators of the Cambrian interval. Only round 20 species of priapulid exist at this time, nonetheless, and trendy penis worms have decreased in dimension dramatically from their ancestors. Unlike the six to eight-inch Kraytdraco spectatus, most priapulids alive at this time measure within the millimeters.

Although penis worms had been named based mostly on their resemblance to a human genitalia, these phallic creatures even have been round far longer than precise penises. According to fossil data, penis worms existed at the very least 100 million years earlier than any living animal developed a penis.

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Owen Clarke is a contract outside sports activities author. He usually writes about climbing, however his work additionally covers bikes, long-distance trekking, and environmental conservation. He additionally authors the darkish fantasy sequence Void Injection and is the founding father of the collaborative writing workshop Dead Foot.