Opabinia: The Noo Noo of Your Nightmares

Opabinia is--without a doubt--the weirdest animal to ever scuttle across the prehistoric sea bed. Its fossils were so weird that scientists laughed in discoverer Harry B. Whittington's face because they thought it was a joke.

So that I may accurately paint you all a picture as to the sheer ridiculousness of this animal, I must return to a place I haven't visited in two decades...Teletubbyland.

Do you see this blue monstrosity? The vacuum-cleaner snout? The round, unblinking eyes? That's Noo Noo...Now picture Noo Noo having babies with the world's ugliest lobster and you might be ready for what I'm about to show you.

Behold.

If you have managed to survive looking upon nature's Cthulhu, let me point out a few key characteristics.

Opabinia had 5 stalked-eyes and a long proboscis with ridges like Noo Noo's. Those ridges gave the proboscis flexibility enough to grab and feed food to the animal's backwards-facing mouth--much in the same way an elephant eats.

The lobes on each side of its body let Opabinia skim across the sea floor.

Despite all of its terrifying features, Opabinia was only about 3 inches long--plus that 1 inch proboscis. You know what they say about arthropods with proboscises 1/4th their body length *wink wink*.

All known remains of Opabinia are found in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia.

They lived and died during an evolutionary period named The Cambrian Explosion--nearly 540 million years ago. It marks the point where life rapidly began branching out and diversifying from simple-celled organisms.

Opabinia and the Cambrian Explosion tie into an evolutionary theory I may tackle here one day called "punctuated equilibrium." It essentially suggests that life goes through long static periods that are punctuated with rapid, sudden changes in evolution.

If this is sounding vaguely familiar, Professor Charles Xavier of the X-Men explains mutant evolution in much the same way. Pull that fun fact out next time someone tries to lecture you about series continuity!

I bet you weren't expecting this post to jump from Teletubbies to Opabinia to evolutionary theory to 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise, huh?

I guess that's just the way the Tubby Toast crumbles.

Middle right: photo credit to Andrey Atuchin

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