Sand creature — like something out of ‘Dune’ — found in Saudi Arabia. See new species
Along the coast of Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea retreats from the rocky and sandy beaches with the tide, revealing small pools teeming with life.
The “lagoon-like” environments are scattered along the shore where land meets water, and in them, tiny creatures crawl up under the rocks and burrow into the sand.
Then the rock lifts, and the creepy crawlies are met with the wide eyes of a researcher.
One of these researchers is Chloé Fourreau, a PhD student at the University of Ryukyus in Japan.
Fourreau is part of a team searching the coastline for the presence of Perinereis, a type of segmented marine ragworm.
It wasn’t long before researchers found one — and it’s a new species.
Unlike the worms living in the sand in the dunes of Arrakis, the fictional planet at the center of the “Dune” universe, this worm is incredibly small, but it does bear a remarkable resemblance to its much larger fictional cousin.
“It might be the real sandworm in Saudi Arabia as it lives in sand, under rocks of the intertidal,” Fourreau wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Definitely played with our notion of time as we were flipping rocks endlessly looking for it.”
Fourreau’s team described the new species in a study, published April 1 in the journal ZooKeys.
The “yellowish-brown” worm is only about 2 inches long, according to the study, and is identifiable as a ragworm because of a “prominent” blood vessel that runs along its back.
The species has been named Perinereis kaustiana, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) ragworm, to honor the marine science program researching the Red Sea, the researchers said.
The worms have curved pincers on one end surrounding a hole, great for swallowing Spice harvesters if they were only a few thousand times larger.
There are some key features that identify the worm as a new species.
First, the KAUST ragworm has different sized tentacular cirri, the membrane-like protrusions along the body, compared with other known ragworms.
The ends of the protrusions are also “finger-like,” the researchers said, which was not seen in other species.
“The new species is so far unique to the northern Red Sea and apparently easy to find in the rocky beaches of the Gulf of Aqaba,” the researchers said.
Many species that call the Red Sea home live exclusively in that area, meaning they are endemic, so the researchers believe this species of ragworm may not be found anywhere else on the planet.
The Gulf of Aqaba starts at the northern tip of the Red Sea and continues to the southern edge of Israel.
This story was originally published April 4, 2024 at 10:30 AM with the headline "Sand creature — like something out of ‘Dune’ — found in Saudi Arabia. See new species."
