The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 21 Right Helical Stone
  During the ups and downs of the waves, the two huge creatures collided hard and started wrestling. At this time, the nearby soldiers finally arrived and showed off their sickle limbs!

The tentacles covered with fine tooth processes were wrapped more and more tightly, and the horny beak opened and closed to gnaw fiercely at the exoskeleton of the pioneer mother, making a crunching sound.

Soldiers surged up from all sides and clamped the exposed soft part of the corner stone with their sickle limbs at the front of their bodies. The scorpion's tail is raised above the head, and the tail clip clamps the tentacles of the horn stone, while the tail stinger pierces hard into the soft tissue and injects digestive juice inside.

The corner stone was in pain, and he loosened a few of his tentacles, waving his hands to try to drive away the nearby soldiers. The force holding the pioneer mother suddenly weakened, and Lin Yi saw the opportunity to control the water jet propulsion system of the pioneer mother to operate at full strength, and broke away from the enemy. Wrapped around his wrist, he quickly dived downwards.

Facing an opponent with an exoskeleton, the fine tooth-like protrusions are not as useful as a suction cup after all. The horn stone spurts out a stream of water from the funnel backwards, and the body rushes forward, and the tentacles wrap around the pioneer mother again, but in The soldiers nearby tried their best to stop him, but they missed him.

Somewhat annoyed, it swung its tentacles and wrapped a soldier's tentacles around it. It opened its sharp horny beak and bit down hard on the soldier's struggling body.

The blue horseshoe crab blood spread, and Bing Hao's body was immediately bitten into two pieces. Immediately, the corner stone loosened its grip on the wrist, allowing the half of the body to fall feebly to the seabed.

The funnel-shaped structure under Jiao Shi's body rotates again, spraying out a strong stream of water, pushing the body back, and once again returns to the classic cephalopod moving posture with the shell facing forward and the head and tentacles facing backward. The gray-white shell with red stripes drew an arc in the water and continued to kill in the direction of the pioneer mother.

The well-developed compound eyes of the pioneer moth swept the seabed and quickly located the location of a coral reef.

Lin Yi's eyes lit up, and he immediately controlled the pioneer mother to swim towards the coral reef, trying to avoid the pursuit of the unknown corner stone.

Primitive cephalopod species, such as cornerstones and other large endocornestones, although their shells are bulky, have air chambers inside their shells. The end of the shell faces upwards, and the tentacles and head face downwards, standing upright like a mop. They swim around so that they can eat those large and heavily armored trilobites among the coral reefs on the seabed.

But this unknown type of large hornstone is different. Like the small ortholiths and later cephalopod molluscs, the tentacles and head face backwards, and the end of the shell swims forward.

Paired with the original waterjet propulsion system, they have unparalleled short-range acceleration capabilities in open water. However, in the complex environment of submarine coral reefs, their huge shells of six to seven meters long and poor steering ability limit them everywhere.

Once the hull is ruptured, the damage to the air chamber structure makes their outcome no better than that of a ship that runs aground.

Behind, just as the horned stone had turned its direction, the body of the pioneer mother immediately rushed into the coral reefs with the power provided by its five pairs of paddling legs and water-jet propulsion system.

The surviving soldiers completed the task of containing them and swam towards the coral reef one after another, continuing to defend the pioneering mother.

As expected, the horned stone wandered around the perimeter for two rounds unwillingly, then waved its tentacles, spraying water from the funnel, and slowly retreated. It did not enter the inner waters of the coral reef, and continued to pursue the plan of opening up the mother. Taking the opportunity to check the injury, a frighteningly large gash was opened on the side of the female turtle's body by the horny beak of the horn stone. Blue horseshoe crab blood was gushing out, attracting the nearby Sakaban turtles to come forward to suck it. He was killed by the soldiers who came and brandished their sickles.

More soldiers and workers broke away from the body of the pioneer mother and quickly cleared the area. The soldiers drove away or killed the nearby creatures one by one, while the workers simply used their chelicerae to clear an open space among the coral reefs for the pioneer mother. .

While cleaning up, Lin Yi's thoughts couldn't help but wander. This unknown corner stone reminded him of an early documentary he had watched in his previous life - "The End of the Animals", which told the story of five mass extinctions in the history of the earth, and the first episode of the documentary was about Ordovician In the late Era, the cornerstone and the feather-winged horseshoe crab were among the creatures that appeared on the scene.

He was still young at that time, and his impression of paleontology was still limited to those well-known species. It was this documentary, which seems full of mistakes from today's perspective, that for the first time made him realize that 400 million years ago, such creatures still existed. A bizarre and strange world, inhabited by such strange species, also made him interested in the knowledge of paleontology.

In the film, Cornerstone is also known as the "straight-shelled nautilus", and was believed to be a powerful swimming predator due to early erroneous reconstructions. He was the top hunter in the Ordovician ocean and truly controlled this world. The old ruler of the ocean is just like the corner stone of this unknown species now.

Therefore, Lin Yi decided to call this unknown species of horned stone that attacked the pioneering motherfly directly called the straight-shelled nautilus, to commemorate the "straight-shelled nautilus" that killed everyone in the documentary that was equivalent to his enlightenment.

Based on the available information, it is speculated that Orthortholite may be a large-scale Ortholite. And the remains of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp are naturally the masterpieces of this right spiral hornstone.

At present, a swimming predator of this size can't even fend off the pioneering mother-fly guarded by soldiers, let alone the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp.

While thinking, the workers had already cleared an area. The injured female pioneer half-buried her body in the sand and began to pupate towards the mother's nest.

Such an injury cannot be healed for the arthropod wrapped in the exoskeleton. It is better to turn into a pupa and form a mother's nest, so that it can temporarily gain a foothold here and quickly develop a sufficient number of soldiers to kill the orthopod.

The pioneering mother flies slowly began to pupate into their mother's nest, and the soldiers and workers also began to obtain food in the surrounding waters. The workers returned to their old business of picking up garbage and eaten, and the soldiers also became proficient in eating. Those little trilobites that were active in the coral reefs and escaped from the snails.

The remaining nesting workers temporarily stopped on the seabed and did not pupate into the mother's nest as they originally planned. When the pioneering mother flies pupate, they will feed the nest with their bodies, supplying all the nutrients stored in their bodies to the mother nest, allowing the mother nest to hatch more soldiers to fight against the snails.

The mother nest gradually took shape, and the clusters of sea ringworms began to spread outwards, but Lin Yi did not stop at all, and continued to control a large number of workers and soldiers to obtain food and transport it back to the mother nest.

Combining the previous small horned stones with the bite marks of small creatures inside the exoskeletons of the corpses of Overlord and other insects, he had a feeling that the true identity of this straight horned stone was not simple.

(End of this chapter)