The images on this page include photographs of specimens of Anomalocaris and its relatives, and drawings of specimens from the scientific literature.
Captions describe salient features of each image.
Other galleries will present images of reconstructions of the creatures, some animated, some fanciful and artistic. This circular fossil from the Burgess Shale formation was described and named Peytoia , and was thought to be some sort of jellyfishbased on its strongly radial symmetry. Years later, work by Whittington identified the round Peytoia fossil as the mouth of a large Cambrian animal. It was a mouth configuration never before seen in such a large animal. A specimen was found that showed that what Walcott thought was the body of a shrimp was one of a pair of spiny grasping arms at the front of the animal.