Ancient Hallucigenia used suction to devour Cambrian comb jellies

A bizarre creature from over 500 million years ago has revealed surprising eating habits. Scientists long debated how Hallucigenia sparsa—one of the Cambrian period's strangest animals—fed itself. Now, new fossil evidence shows it used suction to extract soft tissue from prey like comb jellies.

Hallucigenia sparsa was first described in 1977 by Simon Conway Morris from fossils in Canada's Burgess Shale. Initially, researchers believed it walked on its spines and used its tentacle-like legs to grab food. Later studies corrected this, placing it among lobopodians, an extinct group linked to velvet worms and arthropods.

The latest findings come from Javier Ortega-Hernández, a Harvard paleontologist. He examined a fossil showing seven Hallucigenia feeding on a single comb jelly. The scene was preserved when a sudden submarine landslide buried them in sediment.

Unlike predators with jaws or claws, Hallucigenia lacked such tools. Instead, Ortega-Hernández concluded it relied on suction to pull soft tissue from its prey. This discovery sheds light on its role in the Cambrian Explosion, a time of rapid diversification for multicellular life.

The study confirms that Hallucigenia sparsa was a specialised feeder, targeting soft-bodied creatures. Its unusual method of suction feeding adds to our understanding of early animal behaviour. The fossil evidence also highlights how sudden geological events can preserve rare moments in deep time.