Figure D13 ANOMALOCARIS

Eastward to a warmer, shallow sea,

The womb of Nature: in its sunny brine

Greet multicellular perplexity.

This slug with hackles like a porcupine;

That wormy mass of tentacle and spine;

And, greatest of them all, a swimming PRAWN,

Its mouthparts iris’d open as to dine:

“Ye latter creatures, look on us and mourn.

For each shape that survived, a thousand more were born.”