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Following a torrential summer downpour in northern Arizona, hundreds of bizarre, prehistoric-looking critters emerged from tiny eggs and began swimming around a temporary lake on the desert landscape, according to officials at Wupatki National Monument.
These tadpole-size creatures, called Triops “look like little mini-horseshoe crabs with three eyes,” Lauren Carter, lead interpretation ranger at Wupatki National Monument, told Live Science. Their eggs can lie dormant for decades in the desert until enough rainfall falls to create lakes that provide real estate and time for the hatchlings to mature and lay eggs for the next generation, according to Central Michigan University.
Triops‘ appearances are so uncommon, that when tourists reported seeing them at a temporary, rain-filled lake within the monument’s ceremonial ball court â a circular walled structure 105 feet (32 meters) across â the monument’s staff weren’t sure what to make of the critters.
Following a monsoon in late July, “We knew that there was water in the ball court, but we weren’t expecting anything living in it,” Carter said. “Then a visitor came up and said, ‘Hey, you have tadpoles down in your ballcourt.'”
At first, Carter wondered if toads, which live in underground burrows during the dry season, had emerged during the wet spell to lay eggs. To investigate, she went to the ballcourt, which was originally built by the Indigenous people at Wupatki.
“I just scooped it up with my hand and looked at it and was like ‘What is that?’ I had no idea,” Carter said. But then, she felt an inkling of familiarity; Carter had previously worked at Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona, and recalled reports of Triops there. “And then I had to look it up,” she said…
