Nobody Knows What These Creatures Eat

Hallucigenia, one of the weirdest animals that ever lived, has been extinct for 500 million years. This morning, thousands of them, each the length of a paperclip, are crawling through the tide pools of Pacific Grove, California. In five days the state plans to seal the pools under tarps and pump in chlorine. Why did they come to this one beach? By the end, you'll know. Rosa Delgado runs tide-pool tours, and one is already climbing up her boot. Her neighbor Lou films them, calls them "spaghetti with forks", and his video hits two million views by lunch. That afternoon a state truck arrives with black tarps and chlorine. Officer Dana Brooks has seen an invader take over this coast before. Paleontologist Dr. Ellen Shaw flies in with four days on the clock to prove they're harmless. But every night the swarm marches north in one long line and disappears into the rocks, and it never eats anything in the pools. In this episode: • Hallucigenia sparsa from the Burgess Shale: seven pairs of spines, clawed legs, slender tentacles and a long neck, about the length of a paperclip. • The famous mistake: in 1977 it was drawn walking on its spikes. It took 14 years to flip it over, and until 2015 to find its real head. • Two tiny eyes, a mouth ringed with teeth and needle-like teeth lining the throat: what that mouth was built for. • A new, not yet peer-reviewed study: a fossil comb jelly ringed by the spines of at least seven Hallucigenia, 500 million years ago. • Why California fights invasive species with tarps and chlorine (the killer seaweed in a San Diego lagoon, 2000). CHAPTERS 00:00 Back after 500 million years 0:31 Rosa's tide pools 0:57 Lou's video 1:26 The state truck 1:52 The line in the dark 2:19 Ellen Shaw arrives 2:49 Drawn upside down 3:15 Under the microscope 3:37 Cameras on every pool 4:08 The bait test 4:33 Dana's warning 5:05 The town takes sides 5:27 The other end of the beach 5:48 Tarps at dawn 6:16 Following the trail north 6:46 The top of the boulder 7:22 Why here? 7:58 Dana's new report 8:17 The cookies 8:30 Dawn in Pacific Grove This is a speculative, animated what-if story. Hallucigenia and the science are real; Rosa, Lou, Dana, Ellen and the events in Pacific Grove are fiction. Hallucigenia sparsa lived about 508 million years ago in the Cambrian seas, and its fossils come from the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies. Every episode brings one extinct animal back to the present day and follows the people who have to live with it. Subscribe for the next one, and tell us in the comments which lost animal should come back next. #Hallucigenia #whatif #extinctanimals #BurgessShale #cambrian