Hermit crabs have been taking shelter in abandoned shells for millions of years, but scientists now have evidence suggesting that the “hermit” lifestyle has existed far longer than that.
Besides hermit crabs, a few modern-day species of crustaceans and worms inhabit the cast-off shells of other marine creatures, mostly for protection against predators, says Martin Smith, a paleontologist at Durham University in England. Until recently, the oldest known fossils suggesting hermiting behavior were about 170 million years old, he says.
Now, Smith and his colleagues say that they have unearthed fossils of hermiting creatures almost three times that age, from a geologic period dubbed the Cambrian.
Remains of the
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