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I was once a teaching assistant for a Diversity of Life course and it really left an indelible imprint on my awareness of diversity in general, as well as consolidated my fondness for all living things that began in childhood. It's incredible how successful the "worm" body plan has been and how this has been such an integral bauplan since the earliest phases of animal life. Being a bilaterian essentially equates to a wormy relative (i.e. acorn worms for we deuterostomes) so in honour of that on this auspicious hump day, please share your worms - the more priapulid the better I'm not a hundred percent certain of the current systematics but these two samples from the early Cambrian Chengjiang Biota (Maotianshan Shales, Heilinpu Formation, China) were once considered stem priapulids (or nematomorphs). They are the iconic Maotianshania cylindrica and Cricocosmia jinningensis respectfully. I got these back when I wasn't 100% sure they were offering real Cambrian fossils so bought carefully and sparingly until I was able to prove they were in fact real. I let so many great fossils pass me by out of mistrust and I'm kicking myself to this day. The preparation was pretty raw but they're still amazing under magnification. And the other fossil is a beautiful peanut worm Lecthaylus gregarius from the Lockport Shale, Blue Island, Illinois (Silurian). Phallic-shaped worms with eversible pharynx or proboscis like these were likely the first "predators" in the earliest animal communities before they too were sucked up in the ongoing arms race by enigmatic arthropods like Anomalocarids. Happy hump day everyone. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0052200 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/cambrian--worms-were-voracious-opportunists cheers Marcus