A New Fossil May Revise Cephalopod Genealogy— Or Maybe Not

When it comes to fossils, public interest and enthusiasm seem to be reserved for the big and the fearsome. However, a lot of advances in the science of paleontology arise courtesy of the lowly invertebrates. Now, a new fossil invertebrate represented by a smear on a 330-million-year-old rock slab from Montana may rewrite the family tree of the cephalopod family.

Cephalopods are the multi-armed cousins of clams, snails, and other mollusks. While some— such as ammonites--boasted hard shells that easily fossilized, many of these critters were composed mostly of so tissue which is lousy at leaving a clear fossil record. A new fossil from Montana has been dubbed Syllipsimopodi bideni by Christopher Whalen and Neil H. Landman (both of the American Museum of Natural History, New York), who described it in the journal Nature Communications. ”is cephalopod was preserved in remarkable detail, including clear impressions of so, “eshy material such as ten little arms with rows of suckers.

Whalen and Landman also claim to see a structure called a “gladius” which they say is evidence this is no mere squid. It is a common ancestor to octopuses and vampire squid, or a vampyropod. If correct, their ‰nd pushes the age of this group back by some 81.9 million years. Per Whalen, it “overturns about 100 years of science in cephalopod evolution.” Or does it? Christian Klug (University of Zurich) professes not to see the telltale gladius. Others are reserving judgment until more specimens of Syllipsimopodi are fished from the rocks of Montana and their so tissues can be more fully analyzed.