Researchers claim to have discovered evidence of the oldest known acts of cannibalism. The creatures eating each other were trilobites, roughly 500 million years ago.
The paper documents damage caused by trilobites whacking and chewing on each other from different directions, then digesting the gnawed off bits.
Evidence for cannibalistic violence:
A total of 38 injured specimens exhibiting various healed cephalic and thoracic injuries are documented, in addition to the mangled remains of two individuals that probably resulted from the activities of a durophagous predator or scavenger. Specimens of both species show that most injuries are located on the posterior portion of the thorax, indicating that predators preferentially attacked from behind and/or prey individuals presented the posterior of the trunk towards the predator when threatened or fleeing. The larger sample of injured R. takooensis shows that while unilateral injuries are more common than bilateral ones, there is no evidence for a left- or right-side bias, contrasting with previous suggestions that Cambrian trilobites exhibit right-sided injury stereotypy.
Nature: Gothic from the very start.
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