Hallucigenia first came to light in the 1970s, when paleontologists unearthed its fossils in Canada’s Burgess Shale. These rocks are famous for preserving some of the oldest and most bizarre ...

Colour reconstruction of Hallucigenia sparsa, a very weird, very ancient animal. (Danielle Dufault) Hallucigenia is aptly named: With long spines down its back, seven pairs of clawed legs, and six ...

Hallucigenia, 0.4 to 2.2 inches long (10-55 mm), possessed seven pairs of nail-like spines protruding from its back, with an equal number of pairs of long, flimsy legs underneath tipped with claws.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what an animal looks like when it’s been extinct for over 400 million years — just ask Hallucigenia.Scientists have studied the thumb-sized worm for more than 50 ...

In 1977, British palaeontologist Simon Conway-Morris discovered the fossil of a truly weird animal, which he named Hallucigenia because of its “bizarre and dream-like quality”. He wasn’t ...

Hallucigenia’s unexpected mouth parts leave us wondering what more the animal might have up its sleeve. For example, our study revealed three pairs of tentacles emerging from Hallucigenia ’s neck.

If Salvadore Dali were God, he would surely have designed an animal that looked like Hallucigenia. It has been described as the most surreal creature that lived in the strangest period in the ...

If only Stephen Jay Gould could have lived to see this. Hallucigenia, the mysterious wormlike organism with two rows of spines from the Burgess Shale, has undergone its second reversal. The first ...

Hallucigenia: significance of bizarre extinct creature revealed as it finally bares its teeth. The fossil's bizarre appearance had mystified scientists for more than a century.