Despite its impressive size, Anomalocaris was first discovered in seemingly unrelated, cryptic fragments that would take nearly a century to join one another. The name Anomalocaris or strange shrimp was first given to fossilized remains of the segmented facial limbs, interpreted in 1892 as the tails of shrimp-like animals whose heads, for whatever reason, had never fossilized. Separate fossils of the iris-like mouth were believed to be jellyfish given the name Peytoia, and imprints of the leaf shaped body were taken for some form of sponge, coral or echinoderm dubbed Laggania.