Anomalocaris

A Cambrian predator with huge compound eyes.

Our sources give no reliable size for Anomalocaris, so this outline of its body shape is not drawn to scale.

When: Fossils about 514 million years old studied in 3D
Where: South Australia, and Cambrian rocks elsewhere

A brown flattened fossil of Anomalocaris on a slab of shale, with a row of flaps along its body. — Anomalocaris canadensis from the Burgess Shale, in the Smithsonian collections.USNM PAL 207255 Anomalocaris canadensis Image 1 by Han Zeng, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized.

Anomalocaris was one of the formidable predators of the Cambrian, an early relative of the arthropods.

In 2011 scientists studied the surface of its eyes in 3D for the first time, using 514-million-year-old fossils from South Australia. Its compound eyes were made of many hexagonal lenses, the same shape as the lenses in the eye of a modern housefly.

Anomalocaris: about 514 million years ago. That is 11% of the way back to the Earth’s birth.Periods from the ICS chart

Also in early animals

Charnia A frond-shaped living thing from the Ediacaran sea floor
Auroralumina attenboroughii Described by its finders as the earliest known animal predator
Wiwaxia A small, spiny, scaly animal from the Burgess Shale

Sources

Natural History Museum, London, Eyes on the prize: the evolution of vision