Amplectobelua Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓Amplectobelua lived roughly 516 million years ago, meaning it was swimming through oceans about 250 million years before the first dinosaurs ever walked the Earth.
• ✓Its closest relatives include Anomalocaris, the apex predator of the Cambrian seas, making Amplectobelua part of one of the most fearsome predator families in all of prehistory.
• ✓Amplectobelua belongs to a group called radiodonts, whose circular spiny mouths look so alien that early paleontologists thought the mouth, claws, and body were three completely different animals.
• ✓All known fossils of Amplectobelua come from the Chengjiang fossil beds in Yunnan Province, China, one of the most important fossil sites on Earth and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2012.
• ✓Amplectobelua's frontal appendages are armed with long curved spines that scientists compare to a Venus flytrap, snapping shut around soft-bodied prey like worms, small arthropods, and whatever else was unlucky enough to swim past.