Deep time, that is — courtesy of PaleoIndustrial: The Lost Worlds of Deep Time.

Half a billion years before the first humans walked the earth, and hundreds of millions of years prior to the reign of the mighty dinosaurs, the Paleozoic seas teemed with bizarre and beautiful life forms. PaleoIndustrial strives to bring these long-extinct creatures back to life in still images, short animations, and interactive 3-D reconstructions.

And do they ever. You want to give yourself nightmares, imagine going snorkeling and running into Anomalocaris canadensis.* (Yeah, it’s only three feet long, but on the other hand, you know — Jesus! It’s three feet long!)

* Anomalocaris: Latin for freaky shrimp. Which is what they thought the mouth-parts were when they’d just found those, and not the rest of the body.