Yeah, I hear what they sayin’. “Strange worms are taking their place on your family tree.”
“The Cambrian explosion of animal life now seems more like a whimper,” that’s what that article in Nautilus said. Life evolved in a whole grip of directions, all type of different ways, long before the Cambrian. It’s a good article. You should read it.
But, I mean, we knew that already. Some of us did, anyway.
Musical accompaniment. This is mandatory.
I mean the Cambrian tho, that shit was dope. I mean dudes was comin’ up, you’d be like, “The fuck is this boy doin?” Opabinia had like five eyes, man. I ask you, what typa shit is that, five eyes? And that long-ass tentacle thing with the claw at the end. Crazy maafucker. Shit was tight tho.
All typa cats in that scene. Anomalocaris, I mean you had this huge dude with like two sawblades for a mouth. Marella, all curvy with them long antennae; brought elegance to the game. Wiwaxia, I mean he was like slow but solid, you feel me, he played his position. Pikaia could flow smooth, real technical, I mean he was way ahead of his time. And Hallucigenia, haha what the fuck, man, that dude had a style all his own. Spikes out the back an’ shit. He was doin’ his thing, though.
But all those guys, I mean, look, they could only do what they was doin’ because of cats from way back. I mean all that Cambrian shit, that’s built on a legacy, you feel me?
I’m talkin’ ‘bout old cats; dudes like Charnia, Cyclomedusa — I mean Dickinsonia costata, that dude, that was the first dude to go bilaterally symmetrical! Nobody had done that before. You feel me? All this “two arms, two legs, two lungs, two balls, two labia,” whatever you wanna call it — we wouldn’t have nunna that, wasn’t for Dickinsonia.
Maafuckers thought that dude was crazy. I mean like, he was on some whole other shit. When he came along, you had these cats out here doin’ all types of radial symmetry. See that was the thing back then, radial symmetry. Five arms to box with God, haha. Or six, or ten, or whatever. Some of these cats was growin’ like trees, all branchin’ out, or like tubes, or like mats on the ground. Erbody had some new style; erbody thought they style was the dopest.
And then here comes Dickinsonia, like, “Nah, check this out, right. Bilateral symmetry. Blaow. Front to the front, back to the back.” And he just starts flowin’ like this, and I mean none of these cats can keep up with him. It’s like directional, right? That was the new shit. Everyone knew it. Lookin’ at each other crazy, like, why wadn’t we up on this, dude?
You’d have the front, bam, and then a long cord runnin’ down the middle, and all along the sides you’d have those folds, and you could move with ‘em, move forward! I mean nobody else was doin’ that. Nobody else was on that level.
That was when they started takin’ it further. There was this new dude, Spriggina, yeah, that was when Spriggina first came up. He was vibin’ off what Dickinsonia was doin’, with the bilateral symmetry and the folds and all, and he built on it. He did his own thing, like he kinda put scales or somethin’ instead of the folds, and up at the front he put a head, right? See, that’s where you start to see the head.
Every animal gotta have a head, right? That’s Spriggina. He was the first one who saw that. He broke it down. Had those long sorta scales down his sides, and up at the front a big round head. Bam. I mean that’s an animal. Shit was beautiful.
This was before antennae and compound eyes, and long before fins and tentacles. You could say Dickinsonia and Spriggina were the realest dudes there ever was. I mean that was classic.
And then the game started to bloom and blossom. We got these dudes with eyes, and the mouths and stomachs, and the brains, and the legs and antennae, and everything, you know, all the dope shit that makes this bilaterian game what it is today. We wouldn’t have none of that shit if it wasn’t for Dickinsonia and Spriggina.
I mean I respect the Cambrian, I really do. I got mad respect for Marella and Wiwaxia and you know I feel that Hallucigenia. And I respect these new cats too, you know? Rotifers and priapulids, insects and molluscs, even the vertebrates — I mean, they doin’ some crazy shit out there; we got birds and mammals and shit. We all bilaterians. You feel me? It’s all love.
I just feel like, you know, it’s good to remember where we came from. Seasons change, man. Lot of these old cats ain’t around no more, but they still with us. You know. We still got the two eyes and the two arms, and shit, I still got this spinal cord.
That’s all Dickinsonia, man. Dickinsonia and Spriggina. Them Vendian biota days. I mean I respect the Cambrian, and I respect all the vertebrates, and all the shit they doin’ out there now.
But you gotta know, man, I been on that Vendian shit from Day One.
That’s where we learned the game.
That’s what’s up.