What Were the Alien-Looking Three-Eyed “Dinosaur Shrimp” That Woke Up After This Year’s Burning Man Festival?

Some peculiar creatures stirred up quite a scene in the Nevada Desert recently. And no, we aren’t talking about the Burning Man festival-goers.

The Burning Man festival has a reputation for being a wild and crazy event, but it even had some unexpected guests this year: three-eyed, alien-looking “dinosaur shrimp” that have emerged from the mud after heavy rains flooded the Nevada desert.

How did they end up at Burning Man?

The annual festival takes place in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, a dry lakebed that is normally arid and barren. However, this year, the event was hit by a rare weather event: Tropical Storm Hilary brought heavy rains and flash floods to the region, turning the playa into a muddy mess.

The rainwater activated the dormant eggs of triops and fairy shrimp that were buried in the soil, and they hatched into life. The crustaceans will live for a few weeks or months, feeding on algae, plant matter, and mosquito larvae, until the water evaporates and they lay new eggs for the next generation.

Three-eyed “dinosaur shrimp” is a common name for triops, a group of freshwater crustaceans that look like ancient, armored tadpoles. They have two main compound eyes and a third simple eye that helps them detect changes in light and infrared waves (the word “triops” means “three-eyes” in Greek). They also have 144 legs, and they breathe through their feet!

Triops are not actually shrimps, but they belong to the same class of animals, called Branchiopoda. They are related to fairy shrimp, another type of small crustacean that has also been spotted at Burning Man this year. Fairy shrimp are translucent and can tolerate salty environments.

Both triops and fairy shrimp are extremophiles, meaning they can survive in extreme conditions. They live in temporary pools of water that form after rain or snowmelt, and they can withstand high temperatures, low oxygen levels, and high salinity. They can also survive droughts by producing eggs that can remain dormant for years, even decades, until they encounter water again. A lot of it.

Flash floods trigger the hatching of Triops, yet it becomes a hazardous environment for the mature ones when conditions begin to desiccate again, as evidenced by these “contemporary fossils” retrieved from the Black Rock Desert.

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Triops are considered to be living fossils, as they have not changed much since they first appeared in the Devonian period, about 400 million years ago. They are among the oldest living animals on Earth, and some species of triops are endangered or extinct.

The presence of triops and fairy shrimp at Burning Man is not only a fascinating natural phenomenon, but also a reminder of the diversity and resilience of life on Earth. These ancient animals have survived countless environmental changes and challenges over millions of years, and they continue to thrive in some of the most inhospitable places on the planet.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8