Opabinia (oh-puh-bin-ee-uh) was a genus of lobopod that lived in North America during the Cambrian Period.
Characteristics[]
Opabinia could grow to around 7 cm in length. It possessed five eyes on stalks, with two in the front and three in the rear, and the stalk in the middle of the back row being slightly shorter. It also possessed a long proboscis with a pincer-like appendage on the end.
The living creature[]
Opabinia might have moved slightly above the seafloor and grabbed prey items with its appendage. Alternatively, triangular attachments on the bottom of the animal have been interpreted by some as "legs."
The five eyes were mostly facing up, meaning that they might have been used to spot larger predators.
Importance[]
When the first analysis of Opabinia was presented, the audience is said to have laughed, given how preposterous this creature seems.
It also was involved in the idea that the Cambrian was an "experimental" time period, where the strangest creatures ever to exist were common. However, additional research showed that similar creatures, while absurd when compared to strata from our time period, were common during the Cambrian. While the creatures that existed at that time were incredibly bizarre, standard evolutionary processes still applied to them. The environmental pressures they would have received would have been significantly different than those that existed at any other time.
Opabinia is considered a lobopod, an informal group containing creatures closely related to Arthropods, but thought to lack any jointed limbs. The relation of these creatures to Arthropods is still uncertain.