World's oldest super predator had remarkable vision

These fossils demonstrate that Earth's first apex predator had highly acute vision, rivalling or exceeding that of most living insects and crustaceans. This exciting find will be published on the next cover of the prestigious journal Nature.

Anomalocaris is the stuff of nightmares and sci-fi movies. It is considered to be at the top of the earliest food chains due to its large body size, formidable grasping claws at the front of its head and a circular mouth with teeth-like serrations, in addition to evidence of predation damage to contemporaneous trilobites, and even its fossilised faeces (or coprolites) containing the remains of its prey. The discovery of its stalked eyes – showing astonishing details of its optical design – from a 515 million-year-old deposit on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, now confirms it had superb vision to support its predatory lifestyle.

The fossils represent compound eyes – the multi-facetted variety seen in arthropods such as flies, crabs and kin –and are amongst the largest to have ever existed, with each eye up to 3 cm in length and containing over 16,000 lenses. The number of lenses and other aspects of their optical design suggest that Anomalocaris would have seen its world with exceptional clarity whilst hunting in well-lit waters; only a few arthropods, such as modern predatory dragonflies have similar resolution. The existence of highly visual hunters within Cambrian communities would have placed considerable selective pressures on prey that would have influenced the 'arms race' that began during this important phase in early animal evolution over half a billion years ago.

The discovery of powerful compound eyes in Anomalocaris confirms it is a close relative of arthropods, and has other far-reaching evolutionary implications. It demonstrates that this particular type of visual organ appeared and was elaborated very early during arthropod evolution, originating before other characteristic anatomical structures of this group, such as a hardened exoskeleton and walking legs.