The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 115 Dawn of the Silurian

The sun shines through the water waves again, reflecting the deep blue of the water.

It's a pity that things are the same and "people" are not. The common marine creatures of the Ordovician no longer existed, and the number of trilobites became quite rare. They were replaced by a large number of strangely shaped armored fish and small plate-footed horseshoe crabs.

Among the various schools of armored fish, a few looked like fish from later generations, but they had two spiny dorsal fins, their tails had not yet branched, and their chests and backs were covered with armor plates. They were swimming among the algae and rocks. between.

If future generations of experts or senior enthusiasts who have done some research on ancient fishes are here, they will be able to recognize that this is the Creepy Shen's stickleback, which belongs to an emerging group of fishes - the stickleback fish, and is a distant relative of the cartilaginous fish. , maybe even a direct ancestor.

Although they are still so primitive, they have undergone revolutionary changes compared to the Sakaban turtle and other armored fishes of the previous era, as well as the even stranger and various armored fishes beside them.

Next to the mouth, two pairs of specialized structures with gill arches are pulsing to suck in water and then discharge it through the gill slits. In the next 200 million years, this structure will become the standard feature of almost all vertebrates, helping them embark on their journey to clear the world. , the royal journey sweeping through the eight wastelands.

In later generations, this structure was generally called the jaw.

But now, primitive jaws cannot allow fish to successfully become apex predators, form strategic jaw deterrents, and bring flat jaws to the world. It only improves their efficiency in picking up garbage.

There are other real apex predators out there.

Above the group of Creepy Shen's sticklebacks, a scorpion-shaped figure that was several times the size of the stickleback suddenly shot out. Several pairs of appendages at the front of the head surrounded an unlucky Creepy Shen's stickleback, struggling with it. Shen's stickleback swims toward the seabed.

Anji Ancient Horseshoe Crab belongs to a group called Cryptoceles under the suborder Horseshoe Crabs. It does not have the ferocious sickle limbs of feather-winged horseshoe crabs, nor does it have the chelicerae of later generations of winged horseshoe crabs. It represents the typical appearance of small and medium-sized plate-footed horseshoe crabs of this era.

This group has no special characteristics, but it has a relatively long life. The last horseshoe crab of Mayong River survived until the late Permian, and together with the horseshoe crab suborder Limulus permian, witnessed the most heroic mass extinction event in history. -Then Er Hao died happily and met seven old black men together.

However, just because of the size of the Anji ancient horseshoe crab, it is still a bit reluctant to call it an apex predator. On the seabed, the real apex predator has been waiting for a long time and is preparing to stage a show of the oriole behind it.

The body of Anji Ancient Horseshoe Crab had just landed on the seabed, and was about to enjoy the captured Creepy Shen's Stickleback, but the next second, a pair of well-developed sickle limbs that resembled feather-winged horseshoe crabs stretched out from the sand on the seabed, The clusters of sharp thorns easily penetrated Anji Ancient Horseshoe Crab's body.

The blue horseshoe crab blood surged with the sand. Immediately, a scorpion-shaped body emerged from the sand on the seabed. On two pairs of well-developed sickle limbs, one large and one small, the still struggling body of the ancient Anji horseshoe crab was being hung. On those long thorns.

Obviously, it's another scorpion-footed horseshoe crab. Although its long thorns are not as sharp as the blades of the soldier, they are thicker and more destructive than the long thorns on the sickle limbs of the feather-winged horseshoe crab, proving its identity as an apex predator.

The body shape of this strange plate-footed horseshoe crab is between that of feather-winged horseshoe crabs and winged horseshoe crabs. There is no flat telson at the end of the tail, instead there is a slender and sharp tail spine.

The Xiushan Horrible Horseshoe Crab belongs to a group called the mixed sea horseshoe crab, which sounds quite a bit like a demon king. Before the emergence of large pterygoid horseshoe crabs, they were the first marine apex predators in the Silurian period, the successors to the mantle of the feather-winged horseshoe crab and the fifty-oared horseshoe crab.

Yes, time has come to the early Silurian period 4.3 million years ago. After the ice age that lasted for millions of years and the second wave of disasters caused by the upward surge of heavy metals, the ecosystem finally stabilized. Large areas of shallow land-margin seas reappeared, creating a breeding environment for the creatures that survived the mass extinction, allowing them to flourish again.

Among them, early fishes and horseshoe crabs were the most successful. They emerged at the same time, showing extremely high diversity and competing with each other throughout the Silurian Period.

This Xiushan Horseshoe Crab doesn't know that these tiny swimming fish beside it will take advantage of the desperate attempt to enlarge the size of the horseshoe crabs. The horseshoe crabs with enlarged limbs have been hit by the recession and become the masters of the future world. They just want to do it as soon as possible. After getting rid of this Anji ancient horseshoe crab, he was looking for his next prey.

But soon, it no longer needed to worry about this - a small figure trailing a large number of bubbles appeared in its compound eyes. At first, it did not pay attention to this small figure until a burst of pain came from it. -That figure bumped into it blankly.

A sense of powerlessness came out, its appendages could not support its body, and it slipped on the seabed. At the last moment of its life, its compound eyes showed a scene that it could never understand.

The astonishingly huge figure, swinging five pairs of oar legs, slowly swam forward under the protection of a large number of smaller figures similar to itself. On its side, there were also a large number of tiny creatures surrounding it, similar to the creature that hit it. Similar looking figures.

Several workers broke away from the huge body of the pioneer mother and slowly swam downstream. They used their claws to pick up the body of the Xiushan Horrible Horseshoe Crab that was killed by the micron torpedo and returned to the side of the pioneer mother.

The three pairs of claws under the head of the female turtle slowly took over the body of the Xiushan Horseshoe Crab, tore it apart and put it into its mouth.

What he saw and heard along the way explained to Lin Yi that the long end-Ordovician mass extinction had finally passed, and time had entered the Silurian Period.

For the evolution of species, millions of years are just a blink of an eye. But for a single individual, even a super-individual like a colony, millions of years are too long.

After these long millions of years, I don’t know how many batches of control-level individuals have been changed, but Lin Yi’s consciousness has not changed much - and I don’t know what the existence form of hive mind consciousness is.

In the outside world, hornstones declined, fish and plate-footed horseshoe crabs prospered, and jawed fish began to appear, gradually attacking the upper levels of the food chain. Everything is consistent with the development trajectory speculated by later research.

The straight spiral stone nest group has been destroyed, and now there is no opponent for Lin Yi in the ocean. The nutrients stored before the mass extinction allowed him to quickly restore the population to pre-disaster levels and spread more widely.

What appears here is the vanguard of an "expedition fleet" composed of countless pioneering mothers.

It was not that there was any special gene sequence that attracted Lin Yi to come here, but it was just a decision driven by the special complex in his consciousness from his previous life.

(End of this chapter)