450-Million-Year-Old Organism Resurrected As Soft Robot; How Can Paleobionics Help Understand Evolution?

Over the years, scientists have been using robots as a research tool to understand better the behavior and biomechanics of their natural animal counterparts, like lizards, snakes, salamanders, and sea turtles. Robotics has recently found inspiration in an unexpected source: an ancient marine organism from millions of years ago, which currently serves as a model for developing innovative robots.

Robotics Meets Paleontology

Experts from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University collaborate with paleontologists from Spain and Poland to create a soft robotic replica of pleurocystitid. They aim to widen the modern perspective of animal design and movement by introducing paleobionics. They focus on softbotics using extinct organisms to help understand the biomechanical factors that influenced evolution.

Softbotics is another approach to understanding scientific principles using soft materials to design flexible robot limbs and appendages. Experts believe that most of the fundamental principles of biology and nature can only be explained fully if we look back at the timeline where animals evolved. The research team built robot analogues in this study to understand how locomotion has changed.

The time humans spend on Earth represents only 0.007% of the planet's history. This means that the modern-day animal kingdom that influences our understanding of evolution is only a fraction of all creatures that have existed throughout history.

The team decided to study an extinct echinoderm from the Paleozoic Era whose biomechanics and locomotion were investigated to understand better the natural selection that it experienced. They specifically analyzed the pleurocystitid, a Rhombifera class of echinoderms member that lived 450 million years ago.

Richard Desatnik led the researchers to use fossil evidence and a combination of 3D-printed elements and polymers to mimic the flexible columnar structure of the organism's moving appendages. From this model, they demonstrated that pleurocystitids likely moved over the bottom of the sea through a muscular stem that pushed it forward.

The team suggests that broad sweeping movements were likely the most effective motion, and an increase in the length of the stem can also increase the animal's speed without forcing it to exert more energy.

Since the team has demonstrated that it is possible to use Softbotics in engineering extinct organisms, they are also planning to explore other animals, especially those that cannot be studied similarly using conventional robot hardware. The rhombiferan robot, which they call "Rhombot '' represents an early step to advance the field of paleobionics.

What are Pleurocystitids?

Pleurocystitids are a genus of rhombiferan echinoderm which lived in the Late Ordovician period. They are known for having consistent plating in the theca or body, and their fossil records are primarily discovered in Europe and North America.

These organisms are considered one of the first echinoderms to move using a muscular stem. Since then, echinoderms have evolved to include modern-day starfish and sea urchins. Despite the absence of a modern analogue, pleurocystitids have been particularly interesting to scientists due to their crucial role in echinoderm evolution.