The behaviour of an ancient horseshoe crab in its final moments before death has been captured in the fossil record. A 9.7m-long trackway was created around 150 million years ago when a horseshoe crab fell into a lagoon. The find is of interest because the fossil of the animal itself is present at the end of the trackway, where the animal died. The research appears in the journal Ichnos. Read more
A new fossil species of horseshoe crab shows that the primitive marine creatures have existed for at least a hundred million years longer than previously believed, researchers say. The well-preserved fossils, found in Manitoba, Canada, suggest that the animals scuttled through shallow tropical seas nearly half a billion years ago. The ancient animals were remarkably similar to modern horseshoe crabs.