The creature’s discovery pushed back the time frame when vampyropods, the group to which cephalopods like octopuses belong, appeared in the ocean about 82 million years ago.
Vampyropods are known for having eight legs, an inner shell made of chitin and a soft body – the last of which don’t often appear in the fossil record because it tends to deteriorate more quickly than hard structures like bone.
A well-preserved fossil was discovered in the Bear Gulch limestone formation in Montana and was donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada in 1988. The specimen represents the oldest known relative of these creatures, according to a new analysis of the fossil.
“This is the first and only vampire to have 10 functional appendages,” study author Christopher Wallen, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, said in a statement.
“All previously reported fossilized vampires that preserve appendages only have eight arms, so this fossil can be said to be the first confirmation of the idea that all cephalopods had ten-armed ancestors.”
Wallen, who is also a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Yale’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said Syllipsimopodi is the fossil best known for understanding how vampires arose, as well as helping researchers trace their evolution.
Researchers have long believed that vampires started with ten arms and eventually lost two of them over time — and now, scientists have direct proof.
small but powerful
The clearly detailed fossil shows a creature about 4.7 inches (12 cm) tall with 10 arms, and the suckers are still attached – a very rare find because these arms were basically just muscle. Two of these arms seemed to be longer than the other eight, and their body was torpedo-shaped, similar to a modern squid. The researchers also found the remains of an ink bag.
Soft cephalopods are divided into vampyropods and decabrachians.
Vampyropods include octopuses and vampire squid, both of which are different from actual squid. Vampire squids basically look like octopuses with a built-in canopy because they have a membrane that runs between their arms and connects them to it. They also have two structures to help them feed the named strands in addition to their eight arms.
Meanwhile, Decathlons include the modern squid and the cuttlefish, which has 10 arms, including 2 tentacles. There are a number of differences that separate cephalopods such as squid and octopus, but the number of arms is one of the most well-known.
So why is this fossil a bloodstain, even though it has 10 arms?
Wallen said the team’s genetic analysis, which indicates evolutionary relationships, placed the species within the vampyropod side of the evolutionary tree.
The new species also had several key anatomical features that distinguish it as a vampyropod, including the loss of a stone cephalopod shell used to regulate buoyancy, called a phragmocone, seen in extant organisms such as the nautilus.
“Age makes the fossil very significant — it suggests that vampires (and thus Decabracians) are much older than previously thought (at least 82 million years older),” Wallen said. “It indicates that there is a long period of time during which vampyropods must have been present but not yet found.”
what’s in a name
Syllipsimopodi likely used its longest pair of arms to catch prey and the rest of its shorter arms to hold smaller creatures out of their shells. It also has fins that may have helped it maintain stability and swim.
“Syllipsimopodi may have filled a niche more similar to extant squid, a mid-level aquatic predator,” study co-author Neil Landman, curator emeritus in the Department of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, said in a statement.
The team was surprised to discover that Syllipsimopodi has the gladius, or tongue-shaped and semi-transparent part of the cephalopods. Inner cover.
“The gladius serves to provide skeletal support, as a solid skeleton that muscles can stretch, and as an anchor for the fins (general function is similar to our bones),” Whalen wrote in an email.
“The mouse is a fairly advanced feature in the grand scheme of cephalopod evolution. Today, only squid and their relatives, the vampire squid, have the mouse. Octopuses have reduced it to fin-supporting or spurs of small, solid, ribbon-shaped structures.”
The creature’s genus name, Syllipsimopodi, is a reference to the Greek word “syllípsimos,” which means “prehensile” and “pódi” for foot because it is the oldest cephalopod discovered so far to have suckers on its arms. And the genre’s name, Bidney, is in honor of Biden, who had just opened when the study was first submitted for publication.
“I am encouraged by President Biden’s plans to address human-caused climate change, and his general sentiment that politicians should listen to scientists,” Wallen said.
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