# photo | This ancient monster filled his mouth with food using 18 tentacles

Millions of years ago, the Earth was inhabited by realmonsters whose descendants live in the depths of the sea to this day. One of these monsters is known as the Daihua sanqiong - he lived 518 million years ago and his remains were discovered in Yunnan province in southern China. The worst thing about him is that there were many tentacles around his mouth, with which he pushed the victims into his mouth. Researchers from the University of Bristol believe that he has a direct descendant, and you can stumble upon it at the bottom of almost any ocean.

We are talking about ctenophores - creepy inhabitantsthe depths of the sea, which are described by scientists as "gelatin drops." Unlike their ancestor, they do not have a pronounced skeleton, but in the course of evolution they acquired extremely unusual tools for hunting. Indeed, their method of capturing the victim is very unusual - they twist its tentacles and simply swallow. It is known that they do not even disdain to feast on their relatives.

Daihua sanqiong

Palaeobiologist Jacob Winter thinks ctenophoresgot such a body and learned to swim freely during evolution. The Daihua sanqiong creature's fossil, half the size of a dollar bill, says that it had at least 18 tentacles that helped him not only to catch prey, but also to move. In the course of evolution, these tentacles turned into comb rows, and the mouth of the underwater monster turned outward - as a result, the creature took the form of modern ctenophores.

Previously it was thought that ctenophores were oneof the most ancient creatures on the planet and have not changed much since that time. New research completely overturns this hypothesis - it turns out that those Daihua sanqiong still existed before them, and they went through a very noticeable transformation.

Crescent

With that being with a pronounced skeletoncould turn into a jelly-like creation with manifestations of cannibalism, not all scientists agree. At the same time, they agree that the new research has found common features between ancient organisms and modern jellyfish, as well as other similar creatures.

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