Half a billion years ago, a feisty predator flapped around the primordial seas, hooking prey into its mouth while breathing through long gills on its butt.
Researchers recently discovered this 506 million-year-old creature, called Mosura fentoni, in a cache of museum fossils in Canada. The fossils suggest that these early arthropods were more diverse than previously thought. The team thinks the now-extinct arthropod would have looked a bit like a moth — a distant living cousin — so they named it after Mothra, the fictional giant moth from Japanese cinema.
