New Kind Of Cephalopod Discovered
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A new study says that the oldest known cephalopods are more than half a billion years old.
Cephalopods are in the same group of squid, nautilus, and octopuses. The fossils discovered shattered the previous record for oldest cephalopod called Plectronoceras cambria, which lived 30 million years after the new cephalopod, which is yet to be named.
Fossils dating back to 522 million years old came from the Cambrian period.
The fossils were found by researchers in Newfoundland, Canada.
Some molecular studies conducted also suggested that cephalopods emerged in the earliest Cambrian period, but these fossils are the first to back this claim.
This new cephalopod looked like a pill and had a cone-shaped shell. The fossils discovered showed that the cephalopod was half an inch tall and one 10th of an inch wide.
Michael Vecchione is the invertebrate zoologist working at the national museum of natural history. He says, “all of the cephalopodish things from back in the Cambrian were pretty small.”
Close research also shows that this cephalopod was the first animal to be able to flow up and down in the ocean.
This is thanks to their handy siphuncle, a tube found in its shell. The siphuncle distributes gasses and liquids to different parts of the body.
More research will be held to confirm the early cephalopod. Vecchione says, “I think it is a cephalopod based on what they found. This discovery means that cephalopod separated from the early mollusks really early.”
Mollusks today include clams, mussels, and sea snails.