Hallucigenia
Hallucigenia was a tiny, wiggly sea creature with long thin legs underneath and sharp spikes on its back. It lived more than 500 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs. It looked so strange that scientists first drew it upside down.
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Fun facts
It had up to ten pairs of skinny legs, and most of them ended in little claws.
On its back stood seven pairs of stiff, pointy spikes, probably to protect it.
For a long time scientists could not tell which end was the head. Later they found its mouth and a pair of simple eyes.
It is a distant relative of today's velvet worms and tiny water bears.
More than 100 fossils of it were found in a famous rock layer in Canada called the Burgess Shale.
Most asked questions about Hallucigenia
?What did Hallucigenia look like?
Like a little worm with long thin legs underneath and pointy spikes on its back.
?How big was Hallucigenia?
Tiny. It was only about half a centimetre to five and a half centimetres long.
?When did Hallucigenia live?
In the Cambrian period, more than 500 million years ago.
Myth buster
Myth: Hallucigenia walked on its spikes and had tentacles on its back.
Truth: That is what scientists first thought, but they had it upside down. It really walked on its legs and the spikes were on its back.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Hallucigenia
- Named by
- Conway Morris, 1977
- Group
- Prehistoric giants
- Family
- Hallucigeniidae
- Classification
- Lobopodia > Hallucigeniida > Hallucigeniidae
Where the facts come from
- Hallucigenia (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Han Zeng. CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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