Opabinia

Right.

Opabinia, hallucini- I, I, I write them down in, in the book.

Uh-huh.

If you look at them, you go, "My God, they're like something out of a nightmare," right? And it was just by an accident that our body type became the pr- predominant one.

And our third and final Cambrian monster coming in at just under three inches long with five eyes and a trunk with a claw.

Say hello to Opabinia.

And that's it.

Yes, you heard that right.

The long, flexible feeler with a claw at the end was for grabbing food.

It also had fins along its body for swimming.

Oh, and one more thing about Opabinia.

Its mouth, underneath its head, facing backwards.

Let's begin.

Opabinia had five eyes on little stalks and used a trunk-like appendage to feed itself.

When paleontologists first saw Opabinia, the audience laughed out loud.

The creature measured only about an inch long, yet possessed a segmented body covered in plates, five strange eyes on mushroom-like stalks, and a long proboscis ending in something resembling a claw.

Scientists still puzzle over exactly how this creature lived.

Some theories suggest the hose-like appendage meant Opabinia fed like an elephant snacking on peanuts, plucking tiny prey and bringing it to its weird mouth.

The creature lived over five hundred million years ago in the Cambrian seas during a time when life was still experimenting with body plans.

No templates existed yet.