Animals
How a Fossil Worm From Utah Got Its Dune Name
The star-shaped blades caught Rhiannon LaVine's attention when she split open a rock in northern Utah. They belonged to a fossil worm from roughly 506 million years ago, according to the museum's April 2023 announcement. The find became Shaihuludia shurikeni, described in research first published online that year.
A Name From Dune and Throwing Stars
LaVine and colleagues collected the fossil at High Creek in the Spence Shale in 2021. The formation extends through parts of Utah and Idaho, but this specimen came from Utah. The University of Kansas account explains its name: Shaihuludia recalls Shai-Hulud, the sandworms in Frank Herbert's Dune novels. Shurikeni refers to shuriken, Japanese throwing stars, and the fossil's bladed bristles.
Small Enough to Fit in Your Hand
The preserved fossil is much smaller than the fictional sandworms behind its name. The research paper describes the preserved specimen as about 33 millimeters long. Its ends may be incomplete, so that isn't a measurement of a fully reconstructed living animal. The authors identified it as an annelid, the group of segmented worms, based on its preserved features.
What the Scans Revealed
The team used scanning electron microscopy and X-ray analysis to examine the fossil's structure and elements. Those results helped distinguish an animal's remains from unusual mineral growth. Its soft parts were replaced by iron oxides, with no recognizable internal anatomy. The researchers proposed that decay before final burial helped explain the poor preservation. Their reconstruction shows an interpretation, not a photograph of the living worm.
Another Fossil Got a New Identification
The same study revisited an older Spence Shale fossil previously assigned to Canadia. The authors placed it in Burgessochaeta, a genus previously recorded around Canada's Burgess Shale. They left the species assignment tentative because part of the specimen was missing. Together, the fossils added evidence that these ancient seabeds held more kinds of annelid worms than the earlier record suggested.
