PAPER OFFERS GLIMPSE OF 500-MILLION-YEAR-OLD SEA WORM NAMED AFTER 'DUNE' MONSTER
Excavations by a University of Kansas paleontologist working in a treasure trove of fossils called the “Spence Shale Lagerstätte” have revealed an ancient sea worm unknown to science until now. When she found the fossil, Rhiannon LaVine, a research associate with the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, was part of a team camping and carrying out fieldwork in the High Creek area of the Spence Shale, a geologic formation straddling northern Utah and southern Idaho. The area has been famed since the 1900s for its abundance in some 90 species of Cambrian trilobites and soft-bodied fossils.