The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 166 Clues

The leaf-clawed worm died, and the remaining troops were also defeated. The giant horseshoe crab, the mid-throat spider, and the ancient web-winged cockroach all died under the siege of the crazy-toothed saw ant army, leaving only the remains of their bodies everywhere.

This group of mounds is distributed on both sides of a large river. The river is very wide, and it takes a lot of effort for the sawtooth ants to cross the river.

Among the mounds on both sides of the bank, there were also a large number of mother nests of hostile nests. At this time, under the indiscriminate bombardment of the Kuwinged Divers, most of them had been blown to pieces, leaving only body fragments scattered all over the ground.

The transport-type Kuai-Wing Diver has made an emergency landing and has begun to pupate towards the mother nest, preparing to produce excavation workers to further rebuild the mother nest group here.

When the first terrestrial mother nest is built, a large number of land workers and excavators are produced, preparing to destroy the enemy's mother nest group and mound group, analyze and inspect them, and further study the characteristics of the opponent's nest group level individuals. Condition.

All gene fragments absorbed by the mother nest will be stored in the body, and when the mother nest is absorbed by the mother nests of other nests, these gene sequences will be absorbed together with the gene sequences of the grades that the mother nest itself can produce.

In other words, when Lin Yi reads the genetic sequence of the other party's mother nest, he can also obtain the genetic sequences of all the organisms that the other party's mother nest has absorbed.

But this time, while absorbing the gene sequence of the other party's mother's nest, Lin Yi keenly discovered that several scattered gene fragments seemed a bit familiar?

Although Lin Yi has absorbed a little bit of the genetic sequences of most biological species these days and feels familiar, which is normal. But if you embed this gene fragment into the genetic sequence, you will find that its expression structure is somewhat similar and strange. The swimming leaves of shrimp!

It is not a structure like the back plate of a leaf-clawed worm, but a real swimming leaf structure. Lin Yi, who has had contact with anomalocaridids nests and absorbed their genetic sequences, can completely confirm this.

This instantly cheered up Lin Yi - since the Ordovician mass extinction, the whereabouts of the Anomalocaris nests have been unknown, and they have not yet been found. But now, he found traces that seemed to be left by Anomalocaris!

The theory of the existence of terrestrial arthropod nest colonies will not last long, which means that this trace must be left after the mass extinction, that is, after the other party disappeared.

Whether it was due to problems related to his own existence or simply because he felt indebted to the Anomalocaris nest, Lin Yi had been looking for traces of the Anomalocaris nest.

Since the end of the mass extinction, there have been a large number of reconnaissance queens searching all over the ocean, but nothing has been found, as if the Anomalocaris nest has really completely disappeared from the world. Now, clues about the suspected anomaly shrimp nest were right in front of him, making it difficult for Lin Yi not to be excited.

But this alone cannot explain anything. Anomalocariids are not necessarily the only creatures with similar structures. Even if they are indeed Anomalocaris, the last Schendeghans pasteurianus survived into the early Devonian and Silurian Periods. There may also be some wild non-nesting Anomalocaridids.

But what’s even more strange is that this gene fragment is not in a complete sequence, but a scattered piece. Normally, the maternal nest storage gene sequence is stored in one place, but this one, for some unknown reason. Be separated and stored.

This made Lin Yi immediately feel that something was wrong, and he rummaged through the remaining gene fragments. Soon, he found some parts similar to the structure of swimming leaves, as well as genes related to the structures of dorsal plate setae, tail lobes and compound eyes. fragment.

When the structures expressed by these gene fragments were pieced together, there was already a prototype of an Anomalocaris, which made Lin Yi even more convinced that this was the genetic sequence of an Anomalocaris.

But soon, the identity of Anomalocaris was confirmed - he found the gene fragment expressing the mouth cone structure. This is a unique structure of the order Deinophoridae and is unlikely to appear in other organisms. The mouth cone is hard and sharp, indicating that it is a predatory Anomalocaris, and the structure is radial, indicating that it is a member of the Herdidae - meaning that it is more likely to be a lower-level individual of the familiar Anomalocaris nest group. Out a few points.

More remaining structures gradually emerged, and finally the whole picture of the Heard shrimp was revealed - to Lin Yi's surprise, its appearance was different from any other anomalocaridids that had been discovered in later generations, but rather, it was extremely weird.

Normal Heard shrimps have a well-developed oval head shell that wraps the entire head. The lower inner edge is smooth and protects the entire head like a helmet.

But for this strange Herder shrimp, the inner edge under the head carapace is not smooth, but has sharp tooth processes, like the upper jaw of a placoderm fish, which is particularly ferocious.

In conjunction with this, the pair of appendages under the head are also curved upward, with the thorn blades pointing upward, as if they are mandibles. Together with the skull, it forms a well-developed jaw structure.

The iconic four-radiated mouth cone is located in the center of the jaw, which should be the position of the throat. The whole thing looks like the jaw of a vertebrate, but because the lower jaw is composed of two appendages that can be separated, it looks even more ferocious, like an alien shape. A ferocious mouth.

In addition, the structure of its swimming lobes has also been highly specialized. The first pair of swimming lobes on its side from front to back are particularly developed, and the last pair of swimming lobes are equally developed, but slightly smaller than the previous pair. Smaller and wider overall.

The rest of the swimming lobe structure is highly degraded, forming a swimming lobe structure that is similar to the pectoral and anal fins of fish, similar to that of Schendhans shrimp. This is one of the main reasons why Lin Yi did not confirm the structure of the swimming leaves immediately.

Heard shrimps also have dorsal lobes. For example, the Poseidon shrimp has two rows of swimming lobes on the left and right sides of its body. The upper two rows are the dorsal lobes. The dorsal lobes of this Anomalocaris are still mostly degraded, leaving only a pair of well-developed dorsal lobes shaped like shark dorsal fins.

Moreover, even its tail lobe has been specialized into a shape similar to the tail fin, but it is still arranged horizontally, and its shape is more like that of a whale than a fish's tail fin.

All of these characteristics are highly consistent with the evolution of later pelagic fishes, making this Heard shrimp extremely suitable for fast swimming or cruising, and it is as highly specialized as Schendhans shrimp.

But this attracted Lin Yi's attention - such a highly specialized structure would not have appeared directly in the Early Silurian if it relied solely on natural evolution.

Then, the possibility of it becoming a unit of the Anomalocaris nest becomes even greater. Only nest groups can undergo major morphological changes in a short period of time, producing completely new species, or in other words, higher-level individuals.

As for why the Anomalocaris nest is still missing despite having a grade that is obviously good at pelagic swimming, and why the genetic sequence of this individual was obtained by a terrestrial arthropod nest that is theoretically out of reach, all of this is unclear. Yidu is not yet known.

But in any case, the long-lost nest of strange shrimps finally has a new clue.

(End of this chapter)