Toys for Tots

Ah, if only I knew Japanese, as I would love to have (or give as a gift to the niece--it's even odds at this point) a stuffed Anomalocaris.
For those not in the know, Anomalocaris is one of the extinct creatures whose fossils were found in the Burgess Shale in 1909 (but the fossils were reexamined in the 1980s, leading to our current understanding of these critters). Anomalocaris was part of the Cambrian explosion, or massive diversification of creatures--mostly early arthopods--that took place starting around 580 million years ago. The discovery of these fossils and a look at the bizarre organisms that left them are the subjects of Stephen Jay Gould's excellent 1990 book Wonderful Life, one of my favorite books of all time.

How about a stuffed Hallucigenia or Wiwaxia? I think a whole set of plushie Burgess Shale creatures is in order.

Then again, flipping through Wonderful Life, which I haven't read in years, while writing this post, I swear I saw some of these creatures in my bathroom the other night. Maybe I should have held off on the Raid.