TPO 43 integrated essay

In the lecture, the professor asserts what are the possible weaknesses of the reading theories about how agnostids may have lived, which challenges the reading point of view.

First, the lecturer claims that free-swimming predators usually have well-developed eyes that allow them to locate and hunt their prey; however, the fossil of the agnostids shows that they had poor-developed eyes and they may have been blind. This roles-out that they may have been free-swimming predators. This opposes the article, which proclaims that the agnostids may have free-swimmd predators that hunted smaller animals.

Second, the speaker mentions that animals, which live in the seafloor usually have slow motion and they do not move from one area to another. In fact, they usually stay in the same area hiding their bodies waiting for their prey to come. This can not be the case with agnostids because scientists have found fossils of agnostids in different geographic regions which can prove that they move fast from one area to another. On the other hand, the text states that they may have survived on the seafloor by scavenging dead organisms or by grazing on bacteria.

Finally, the lecturer asserts that parasites typically live in a small population due to the fact that if they are too many, they can kill the host, but I researcher concluded that agnostids lived in a very vast amount because they found numerous amounts of fossil together at the same place. This refutes the reading, which points out that the agnostids might have lived on primitive fish or even on other, larger arthropods.