Anorith and Armaldo
![](https://bogleech.com/pokemon/allpokes/347Anorith.png)
I was pretty excited when I saw that there'd be an Anomalocaris pokemon. If you need a refresher, this three-foot beast was the world's largest known predator during the Cambrian era, and its kind are believed to have been the ancestors of all modern arthropods.
Anorith, a rock/bug type and our second fossil line, embellishes very little of the real animal, basically following Anomalocarid anatomy to a T, and those dewey eyes are so sweet for something that was basically the T-rex of its day.
Anorith, a rock/bug type and our second fossil line, embellishes very little of the real animal, basically following Anomalocarid anatomy to a T, and those dewey eyes are so sweet for something that was basically the T-rex of its day.
![](https://bogleech.com/pokemon/allpokes/348Armaldo.png)
Things get...kinda weird...when Anorith evolves into Armaldo. I understand what they were going for here, I guess; like Kabutops, it takes a marine invertebrate and adjusts it into a bipedal, amphibious hunter, a glance into some wildly speculative evolution of an anomalocarid that never went extinct.
Anomalocaris-turned-dinosaur is a great idea for a fossilmon, and it's competently drawn, but Anomalocaris really loses something special when you take the claws off its head. Look at those claws. Those are Anomalo's premier anatomical characteristic, like a Cthulhu made of shrimp and also really cool, unlike Cthulhu, who is a tired nerd. Anorith turns those wonderful face-fingers into a relative banal pair of arms where you would expect any pair of arms to be, and it just feels too unlike the spirit of its basis. The ear-shaped eyes are also kind of a bit awkward, and in both stages of this line, I never really liked the "eagle feather" look of those red and white fins.
![](https://bogleech.com/pokemon/allpokes/armaldocard.png)
Still, on its own merits, and not held up to the real animal's rather high standards, Armaldo is a unique looking creature with a lot of personality, kind of like a fat goana lizard crossed with a silverfish. It's easy to see why it has such a devoted following.
![](https://bogleech.com/pokemon/pr4.png)
Kabutops to this day remains my #1 fossil pokemon, but the Anorith line is still a pretty worthy followup to its legacy.