FOSSILS ET AL.
Balhuticaris, or How I Faced Rejection Thanks to a Fossil Meme
Balhuticaris voltae, a Cambrian arthropod that faced rejection but became a viral sensation thanks to a fossil meme
Science can be an extremely negative process.
Behind the joy of discovery, there is often a world of extreme competition and rejection. In the world of paleontology, a study can take months to years to complete, usually sacrificing evenings, weekends, and even nights. That was my 2020 to 2022 project on Balhuticaris.
I clearly remember when Bob Gaines, a paleontologist at Pomona College, first unearthed a strange fossil from the slopes of Kootenay Valley, amid the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The fossil was a large, rectangular shield, or carapace, with some legs intertwined. We were left perplexed at the sight of this incomprehensible find; the fossil was left in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) collections, with the hopes that only the future would tell us what it was.
Two years later, the perfect opportunity emerged. When looking inside the collections with Jean-Bernard Caron, the lead invertebrate paleontologist at the ROM, a pattern started to emerge: it was a new species, which I appropriately dubbed “Mega” in my notes. As more fossils from the collection's drawers were examined, the pieces of the puzzle began to fit. Balhuticaris was born.
But what is Balhuticaris?
Balhuticaris is an arthropod, a group that today includes animals such as spiders, insects, and shrimp. It lived 500 million years ago in the shallow seas of the tropics and can only be found as a fossil at the top of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
500 million years ago was an extremely interesting time for any biologist; for the first time, animals were evolving features that would be key in their evolutionary history, such as eyes or exoskeletons, and were diversifying into the major animal groups we can recognize today, from arthropods to worms and even vertebrates. The fossils of that period are a direct window into the first major steps of animal evolution.
These fossils show that evolution was still trying things out at that time. Names like Hallucigenia or Anomalocaris (strange shrimp) testify to the strangeness of those early animals.
Balhuticaris, meaning the crab of Balhut, is no exception. At 25 cm, Balhuticaris was a giant compared to most animals of that time and had as many as 110 segments, only rivalled by modern centipedes. As if it were a chimaera, Balhuticaris also had the double eyes of modern mantis-shrimps and a unique arch-like carapace covering its head, a striking feature I had only seen in a couple of trilobites before.
Putting this animal together and understanding how it lived was no easy task. There was also much to research and talk about; from 1970s obscure literature about how brine shrimps eat, to changes in body size across animal evolution. However, when the study was submitted for publication, it was rejected.
The submission, correction, and resubmission process was repeated six times. To me, this process meant not only revising the study, often deleting paragraphs and analyses that had taken weeks to complete, but also difficult discussions about the study’s significance with my supervisor.
At that point, one starts to ask themselves: why am I doing this?
This extremely niche study would be read in detail by less than 10 people on the planet, a third of whom would probably oppose or reject its significance. To me, there was no incentive: no salary rise, no well-deserved vacations, not even praise coming from the paleontological community.
And then, I decided to tweet it.
The weirdness of Balhuticaris became a sensation. Shares and likes are still climbing up in 2024. People were drawing fan-art and sharing memes (including the nicknames Cambrian Beagle or Sad-nun). Popular Mechanics interviewed me and even observed puzzled how Marca, a leading sports magazine in Spain, shared the story online. Much of this fame was also thanks to Hugo Salais, a talented Spanish paleo-artist who brought Balhuticaris back to life beautifully.
For the first time in my PhD, I felt valued. I saw how my esoteric research had meaning beyond the advancement of science; even if momentarily, it brought people joy and amazed and intrigued them about the natural world.
The paper was finally published in July 2022 in the journal iScience and continues to be cited today as other researchers find carapaces of similar sizes or debate over the many weird features of Balhuticaris. While this is an achievement in itself, what truly helped me face rejection was my newly found connection with the public and paleo-enthusiasts.
To any paleontologist in a similar situation, I would tell them to always share their research. People may be actually waiting to learn more about our discoveries.
Published in Fossils et al. Follow to learn more about Paleontology.
