In Depth
Ovatiovermis is loosely termed a naked lobopodian, this is because the body of this creature was soft and not covered in armoured plates. Lobopodians like Ovatiovermis are so called because their limbs, called lobopods, are fleshy tube like appendages. Ovatiovermis had nine pairs of these lobopods, arranged into three distinct groups.
The first two pairs of lobopods situated closest to the head, were long and covered in roughly twenty pairs of spines along their lengths, with bifid claws at the tips. The next four pairs of lobopods after these were similar, but overall shorter and with spines that were smaller except for those growing towards the tips which were larger. The last three pairs of lobopods were much shorter and thicker than the others, no spines, just claws at the ends. It is thought that these bottom three pairs of lobopods were for gripping hold of an anchor point such as the head of a coral, and then waiving the upper lobopods with spines through the water in order to trap small morsels of organic matter, or creatures floating in the water.
There is no clear distinction between the head and the body, but the mouth of Ovatiovermis is situated on the end of a proboscis. As food was caught within the spines, the lobopods could be brought before the mouth which then sucked the food up. The larger claws at the end of the lobopods were likely more for climbing up sponges and corals. Ovatiovermis also had two small nodules on top of the head which may have been primitive eyes.
Further Reading
- Cambrian suspension-feeding lobopodians and the early radiation of panarthropods. - BMC Evolutionary Biology. 17. - Jean-Bernard Caron & C�dric Aria - 2017.
