It’s got three eyes, gills on its butt and wing-like swimming flaps along its segmented body. No, it’s not the kaiju Mothra from the Godzilla-verse — but the moth monster did inspire this creature’s name. This is Mosura fentoni , a 506-million-year-old arthropod predator from Canada’s Burgess Shale, a fossil deposit in the B.C. Rockies. Its discovery this past spring by paleontologists at the Manitoba Museum and Royal Ontario Museum sheds light on the diversity of early arthropods, a group that includes modern insects, crabs and shrimps.

The kaiju Mothra, as featured in Ishirō Honda's 1961 film Mothra. Mothra become a recurring character in the Godzilla franchise. (Photo: Toho/Wikimedia Commons)

“Arthropods are super successful, evolutionarily speaking,” says the Royal Ontario Museum’s

See Full Page