This trilobite was equipped with a 'hyper-eye' never seen before in the animal kingdom
By Joanna Thompson 4 days ago
After 50 years, this amazing structure is confirmed.
The humble trilobite, a helmet-headed creature that swam the seas hundreds of millions of years ago, was hiding an extraordinary secret — a "hyper-eye" never seen before in the animal kingdom.
By poring over X-ray images, researchers found that certain species of trilobite — extinct arthropods distantly related to horseshoe crabs — had "hyper compound eyes," complete with hundreds of lenses, their own neural network to process and send signals and multiple optic nerves, according to new research published Sept. 30 in the journal Scientific Reports.
Today's arthropods, like dragonflies and mantis shrimp, are also known for their powerful compound eyes, which are composed of myriad eye facets called ommatidia, each equipped with its own lens, like a disco ball.
But, according to the new findings, trilobites from the family Phacops had compound eyes that were far larger and more complex than their modern-day arthropod relatives. Each of their eyes (they had one on the left and one on the right) held hundreds of lenses. At nearly a millimeter across, these primary lenses were thousands of times larger than a typical arthropod's. Nestled beneath them like bulbs in a car headlight sat six (or more) faceted substructures akin to a typical compound eye. "So each of the big Phacopid eyes is a hyper compound eye with up to 200 compound eyes each," study lead author Brigitte Schoenemann, a paleontologist at the University of Cologne in Germany, told Live Science in an email.
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https://www.livescience.com/trilobite-eyes