August 6, 2019

Cambroraster falcatus fossil (Image courtesy Jean-Bernard Caron© Royal Ontario Museum)

An article published in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences” reports the discovery of a new species of marine predator that lived in the Cambrian period, just over 500 million years ago, discovered in the famous Burgess Shale. Joe Moysiuk, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, and his supervisor Jean-Bernard Caron named this animal Cambroraster falcatus believing that its carapace had a certain resemblance to the Millennium Falcon.