Toxopneustes pileolus (flower urchin, a highly venomous reef-dwelling echinoderm) ( en.wikipedia.org )
One of the only marine organisms I find truly terrifying
![](https://mbin.grits.dev/media/cache/resolve/entry_thumb/ba/8d/ba8da83db441d576eaaa6518abda34bfb00bfd9bc74fe3e90fcbf0db4856314b.jpg)
One of the only marine organisms I find truly terrifying
Also known as the San Francisco Bay Plan, it was a 20th century campaign to cut off and reclaim a large portion of the SF Bay, turning it into two freshwater lakes. Modeling efforts determined it would have been an unprecedented environmental catastrophe.
A nice well-rounded article, gets right to the point
"the occurrence of unusually high spore abundance of ferns in the fossil record, usually immediately (in a geological sense) after an extinction event. The spikes are believed to represent a large, temporary increase in the number of ferns relative to other terrestrial plants after the extinction or thinning of the latter."
More animals with fun names