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- Hundreds of three-eyed Triops, AKA “dinosaur shrimp,” recently reanimated and surfaced after a monsoon in Arizona looking like some sort of alien spawn.
- Triops’ appearances are so uncommon the officials at Wupatki National Monument where they were discovered had no idea what they were.
- More nature news here.
Something strange happened after a massive monsoon rainstorm hit Wupatki, Arizona, about an hour north of Flagstaff. Hundreds of small alien-looking creatures surfaced in the standing water, seemingly out of nowhere.
Those creatures turned out to something called Triops or “dinosaur shrimp.” Triops is Latin for “three eyes” and these creatures’ ancestors go back even further than the dinosaurs.
“Fossil records indicate that these crustaceans evolved over 350 million years ago during the Devonian period and have remained relatively unchanged in external morphology,” according to Central Michigan University.
They appeared after the storm swimming around a temporary lake created in the ceremonial ball court at Wupatki National Monument.
“We knew that there was water in the ball court, but we weren’t expecting anything living in it,” Lauren Carter, lead interpretation ranger at Wupatki National Monument, told Live Science. “Then a visitor came up and said, ‘Hey, you have tadpoles down in your ballcourt.'”
They weren’t tadpoles.
Carter said, after scooping one up with her hand, that the Triops looked like “little mini-horseshoe crabs with three eyes.”
They actually turned out to be were Triops, whose eggs can lay dormant for decades in the desert until rehydrated.
“Once rehydrated, the cysts split open and the embryo is released. The embryo will develop into a metanauplius within several hours and begin filter feeding. The first three pairs of appendages (antennules, antennae, and mandibles) are typically well developed in the metanaupli and segmentation is already apparent on the abdomen,” according to Central Michigan University.
“The absence or presence of temporary water sources encompasses the ecology and life history of Triops. Without such environments, Triops will remain in stasis and their fitness will remain as such. When flash floods or heavy seasonal rains occur, the cysts are reanimated and the majority of these crustaceans’ life cycles must occur within the time allotted by the ephemeral ponds.”
As such, they don’t appear very often and after this latest “dinosaur shrimp” encounter they probably won’t be seen again for several years to come.