(ORDO NEWS) — Triops, or tadpole shrimp, have been living on our planet since the time of dinosaurs, American scientists have found out. Their eggs can lie dormant in the soil for decades, until sufficient rainfall occurs.
Tadpole shrimp have lived on Earth for 550 million years. They can be seen, for example, in Arizona (USA), in the Wupatki State Reserve. One of the last encounters with rare creatures happened recently.
They were filmed by 29-year-old Adar Leibovich while inspecting rocks in the desert. He noticed several bizarre three-eyed creatures in a puddle and filmed them.
Adar Leibovich spoke about his impressions on his page in one of the social networks.
According to him, triops eggs can remain dormant for many years. But as soon as the water touches the egg, it activates and hatches into a tadpole.
After that, it grows to the state of an adult in just over a week. It then breeds and lays more eggs to repeat the cycle.
Triops means three-eyed in Greek. These creatures have two large compound eyes and one small one in the middle with photoreceptors that help capture light.
They are called tadpole shrimp because of their long tails and helmet-like shell.
The appearance of triops has changed little compared to the fossils of their counterparts dating from the Devonian period – between 419 million and 359 million years ago.
This is more than 100 million years before the dinosaurs appeared on Earth. In wildlife, triops can be seen quite rarely, so each case is of interest.
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