Researchers Discover Lobster-Like Predator That Gave Rise To Spiders, Butterflies And Existed 250 Million Years Before Dinosaur

Researchers have discovered a new lobster-like predator that gave rise to lobsters, spiders and butterflies. The newly identified species named Yawunik kootenayi was discovered from a 508-million-year-old fossil site.

Yawunik kootenayi is a marine creature with two pairs of and prominent grasping appendages that lived as much as 508 million years ago, according to researchers.

The fossil identified by an international team led by paleontologists at the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, as well as Pomona College in California, is the first new species described from the Marble Canyon site.

"This creature is expanding our perspective on the anatomy and predatory habits of the first arthropods, the group to which spiders and lobsters belong," said Cédric Aria, a PhD candidate in U of T's department of ecology and evolutionary biology and lead author of the resulting study.

"It has the signature features of an arthropod with its external skeleton, segmented body and jointed appendages, but lacks certain advanced traits present in groups that survived until the present day. We say that it belongs to the 'stem' of arthropods."

According to the study, Yawunik was capable of moving its frontal appendages backward and forward, spreading them out during an attack and then retracting them under its body when swimming.

The study was published this week in Palaeontology.