Shell-breaking crabs lived 20 million years earlier than thought

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In a museum display case Cornell paleontologist Greg Dietl recognized a 69 million-year-old crab fossil with an oversized right claw a feature previously thought to appear more than 20 million years later. Credit: Cornell University
In a museum display case, Cornell paleontologist Greg Dietl recognized a 69 million-year-old crab fossil with an oversized right claw, a feature previously thought to appear more than 20 million years later. Credit: Cornell University

While waiting for colleagues at a small natural history museum in the state of Chiapas, Mexico last year, Cornell paleontologist Greg Dietl chanced upon a discovery that has helped rewrite the evolutionary history of crabs and the shelled mollusks upon which they preyed.


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