Yunnanozoon (Oumcraft)

Buy on

Buy on

Buy on

Species from the earliest parts of life on earth, the Palaeozoic, are very rare in toy form. Oh yes, there are plenty of Dimetrodon, Dunkleosteus and even Anomalocaris, but any of the smaller, crucial creatures to the story of life on earth are scarce. Enter Oumcraft, and her game LIFE:  evolution of life in earth to put this right, with each game piece being perfect as collectable pieces of these ancient species. I have previously touched on one of the invertebrates of this game, so now let’s look at a vertebrate, and an early fish of the Cambrian of China, Yunnanozoon, a chordate similar to Haikouella and known from incredibly well preserved specimens. Let’s see how she did.

As a game piece and a very early vertebrate, it is quite small, measuring 0.9″ long and 0.3″ high, making this near enough life sized to the actual fossil. The pose is the same as all the others, simple and straight on, but this works well, especially for allowing to see the great details of this model, which I will get to. The models are unpainted, so if you wish to paint them, you can. Era and game stats are printed on either side, attached to a great base, looking like a genuine sea bed. Really nice.

Accuracy is easy to talk about, as the body layout is well known, as these animals are found in conservet lagerstatten. Oumacraft captures the major features of these animals perfectly, the tail and gill slits beautifully. Even the mouth is here. The only thing that you won’t see are the eyes, but they would be quite tiny anyway. Pretty brilliant overall.

Once again, Oumacraft knocks this out of the park, with great styling here to truly show this bizarre start to vertebrate life. I really recommend grabbing this model, and any of the other LIFE:  evolution of life in earth models, they really are worth it for collecting or gaming. Check out the Oumacraft site for more, these models are well worth it!