From roly-polies to trilobites, animals have been curling up the same way for millions of years. Simple behaviours sometimes evolve into entire lifestyles. From bugs to armadillos, thousands of animals today curl up; they are able to shape their bodies into a ball, becoming the ultimate defence strategy. Among all animals able to “roll”, arthropods…
Category: Paleontology
The 500-million-year old shrimps that wore a shield: Beyond the carapace (I)
Around 500-million-years ago, all macroscopic life was still living underwater. Animals were still relatively young, and plants still had tens of millions of years to evolve and claim the land. You have probably heard about this time: the Cambrian period. The Cambrian is probably one of most popular paleontological eras without dinosaurs (in fact, almost…
Seaweed for sceptics: ammonoids and brown algae
Welcome to the next issue of the Seaweed for Sceptics series. The first post of the series explored the rough origin of the red algae, showing the genetic impariment that these seaweed suffer as a result of their extreme origins. In this second post we shall focus on one of these weird connections that crop…
On elephants and bacteria 