[x]

Browse More Like This

More from ~NocturnalSea

View Gallery · View Prints

Featured in Groups:

#Ancient-Beasts

#Living-Earth
Every day is Earth day!

#Group-Of-Stalkers
We Stalk You

Details

Submitted: January 5, 2012
Image Size: 207 KB
Resolution: 687×514

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 18
Favourites: 20 [who?]
Views: 429 (0 today)
Downloads: 25 (0 today)

[x]

Eldonia ludwigiby ~NocturnalSea

Traditional Art / Drawings / Animals

a somewhat enigmatic creature from the Cambrian-era Burgess Shale. When originally discovered, Eldonia was interpreted as a sea cucumber with an odd, circular mantle around its body. Later, it was thought to be some sort of jellyfish or maybe a lophophore. Now it's believed to be a primitive deuterostome-- the group of animals that includes echinoderms, chordates and hemichordates. Its closest relative is believed to be another Cambrian animal called Herpetogaster-- nicknamed the Parsley-Penis Worm (google Herpetogaster, you'll understand).

In the past Eldonia was thought to be a pelagic swimmer, due to its jellyfish-like shape. More recent reconstructions portray it as a benthic animal like a bowl with a plume of tentacles sticking out of the top-- even the model in the Field Museum looks that way. But.... I don't know, something just never looked right about that to me.
Here I've split the difference and reconstructed Eldonia as a kind of prehistoric Enypniastes, spending most of its time on the ground grubbing around in the mud, but with the ability to make short, jerky swims if it needs to. It swims by scrunching up its C-shaped body, which contracts the flexible gelatinous mantle.
Also featured here is a small school of Odaraia and a couple of Hallucigenia poking around for food that the Eldonia are stiring up.

*herofan135 May 21, 2012

Great job on these! Many of the cambrian life-forms are so strange!

~Tarturus Mar 22, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

This sounds like quite an interesting creature.

~AmnioticOef Jan 6, 2012

I like it, but it's a little hard to make out the form of the Eldonias(ae?).

~NocturnalSea Jan 6, 2012 Professional Traditional Artist

Yeah, I know. I struggled a bit since no one angle properly conveys what the whole animal looks like. That's why I tried to show them from four different perspectives. Even the fossils are hard to figure out. It's kind of like looking at a picture of a ctenophore or an Enypniastes for the first time-- a lot of cool curves, but no clue how it all fits together exactly.
Basically Eldonia looks like a sea cucumbers curled into a C-shape floating inside jellyfish bells with its tentacles sticking out the bottom.

~AmnioticOef Jan 7, 2012

I think I understand. Very cool tentacles, by the way.

*Banvivirie Jan 5, 2012 Professional Traditional Artist

I like the little hallucigenia walking around.

~NocturnalSea Jan 5, 2012 Professional Traditional Artist

thanks. I'm not sure if I got their heads totally right. There seems to be some disagreement in the reconstructions I found.

~DeroAgent73 Jan 6, 2012

"disagreement in the reconstructions" is Hallucigenia in a nutshell, I think.

=avancna Jan 5, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

While your reconstruction is elegant, the benthic mode of life is based on several lines of evidence, the first being the pattern of epibionts being closest to the rim, rather than scattered randomly, the second being evidence of the carapace being a firm, keratinous material (especially apparent in its close relative, Velumbrella), and third being how would a jellyfish-shaped organism pulsate jellyfish style if its organs surrounded a not-hollow center?

~NocturnalSea Jan 5, 2012 Professional Traditional Artist

Yeah, it probably was a benthic critter-- I just can't shake the feeling that it looks too much like a swimming animal. I think it's because of the big, perfectly circular carapace-- why is it so much bigger than the main body? Seems like a lot of wasted energy.
I've read Dzik's paper about the epibionts, but I haven't been able to find any good information about the hard carapace (that paper does mention growth rings indicatig a hard shell, but I don't think that's necessary true-- it could have just been a semi-solid, but still flexible mantle that grew in noticeable stages).

More from ~NocturnalSea

Featured in Groups:

Details

Statistics

Eldonia ludwigiby ~NocturnalSea

The Journal Portal

Polls

What is your preferred drawing software?

deviantART [dee·vee·un'nt·ART]

Keep in Touch!

Deviousness

Add Media

Style