Remember when balloon hats and poodles were the biggest fashion statements? Little did you know that your favorite childhood party favors would actually be proven to exist in the future (kind of).

“A real-life balloon animal that once lived in the ancient sea looks like a bird’s nest in fossil form,” according to study researcher Tom Hearing, a doctoral student in geology at the University of Leicester, “The newly discovered species hails from 520 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period, when life on Earth exploded in diversity. Dubbed Nidelric pugio, this creature had a balloonlike body co vered in an exoskeleton of spines.”

See your childhood dreams realized in this intriguing article.