Clams show whereabouts of ancient octopuses
The fossil record is very incomplete. Usually to become a fossil, an organism needs hard parts such as bones, teeth or shell. The fossils of such things are called body fossils.
Unfortunately, not all animals have such parts.
The major divisions biologists group animals into are phyla, such as molluscs (which includes clams and snails), arthropods (lobsters, crayfish, crabs, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes and insects), and chordates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals). Of the 33 living phyla, only 19, or 60%, have hard parts.
But body fossils are not the only kind.
Another group is termed trace fossils, such as tracks, trails and burrows — things left or made by an organism. Trace fossils give us a more complete picture of living communities in Earth’s past.
A good example is provided by a bit of research just published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Octopuses are major players in many modern ocean ecosystems, especially reefs. Over 200 species are known. Except for a parrot-like beak that is not much harder than your fingernails, they have no hard parts.
So how many body fossils of octopuses do we have? One — a specimen on a slab of limestone from Lebanon of an octopus that lived during the Cretaceous Period about 100 million years ago. We do, however, have trace fossils from octopuses. Octopuses are carnivores, and part of their diet consists of clams. They drill a hole into the intended victim and then inject venom that relaxes the muscles the clam uses to hold its shell closed. Once open, the octopus can eat the clam, leaving the hole as a potential trace fossil.
Predatory snails also drill holes in clams using a file-like tongue called a radula, but their holes are much larger and more regular than those made by octopuses, so paleontologists can tell what kind of predator ate an ancient clam.
The characteristic holes drilled by octopuses in clam shells had been known from the Eocene Epoch, about 50 million years ago, to the Pleistocene ice age of just a few thousand years ago.
The new research extended the trace fossil record of octopuses back by about 25 million years.
The newly described octopus trace fossils are holes in three clam shells. In two of the shells, the holes went all the way through. The third has four holes that were never completed. Perhaps the octopus was bothered by a predator of its own.
The fossils come from a rock unit called the Pierre Shale, which formed in the Cretaceous Period 74 million years ago in South Dakota. At the time that area, along with the rest of the Great Plains, was covered by a shallow ocean called the Western Interior Seaway.
At various places on the bottom of that sea were conical mounds produced by methane seeps, places where methane from deep underground would bubble up. Such seeps today support whole communities of organisms, and that was also true in the Cretaceous.
In addition to clams, fossils of ammonites, snails, tubeworms, echinoderms and lobster-like crustaceans have been found around those prehistoric seeps.
And now we know octopuses were living there, too.
Gnidovec.1@osu.edu
There are parts of Dave Deviller’s life that sound like the plot of a gritty fiction novel, with stories of a young prosecutor cracking down on organized crime, facing death threats from the gang whose members he was putting behind bars.
There’s a car chase through heavy traffic, a family whisked out of state for their protection, and a brazen criminal issuing threats through public
veiled news reports.
In the end, the bad guys go to prison for a long time, and the young prosecutor shifts his attention to other gangs and corrupt politicians and foreign drug cartels and an array of other crooks in
an ongoing quest for justice.
Devillers, 55, could write volumes about his decades-long career as a prosecutor, first in Franklin County and then in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio. “I’ve always been, sometimes to my detriment, aggressive,” he said in an interview last week with The Dispatch. “I don’t do well sitting idly. I don’t have hobbies. I really love the job.”
But Devillers is closing the book – or maybe just a chapter, as he’s not planning to retire – on a storied career as a prosecutor, with his official resignation as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. The post is appointed by the president, and Devillers stepped aside in deference, as Joe Biden’s administration moves to replace U.S. attorneys chosen by former President Donald Trump.
Monday will be the first day for Devillers without a morning briefing or a new or ongoing criminal case to tackle. He’s not quite sure how he’s going to handle it.
“There’s never been a day that’s gone by that I wasn’t thinking about some criminal, some crime,” he said.
‘Good at putting bad guys behind bars’
Devillers, who grew up in Upstate New York and New Jersey, began his legal career as an intern and then an assistant prosecutor in the Franklin County Prosecutor’s office. Since then, there have been many memorable cases, including the prosecution of the X-clan. The group of paid hit men were described in The Dispatch as “an old-time, organized-crime gang, demanding a piece of the criminal action around Mount Vernon Avenue and shooting those who failed to pay.”
Devillers tried 10 murder cases over the course of about a year related to the gang, capped by the prosecution of its leader, Ronald Dawson. The stakes were high. “I realized pretty early on in the case and the investigation and prosecution that if I lost, it was going to be bad. People were going to die, witnesses were going to get killed,” Devillers said.
One witness in the case was murdered. Devillers was once chased on the highway after work, escaping potential injury or death from his pursuers only after pulling into a police station.
The threats led to months of police protection for Devillers, his family and neighbors. It was bad enough that, at one point, in the middle of court proceedings, Devillers’ wife, Julia, and young children were escorted onto a plane out of state for their protection.
Back in 1999 and 2000, Amy Bednarek could tell when her neighbor in a Columbus Northeast Side neighborhood arrived home from work each day. It was when the helicopter was circling overhead, ensuring Devillers’ safety.
Bednarek, longtime friend of the Devillers family, said the neighborhood was aware of the threats, with plainclothes officers parked strategically down the block and others inside her neighbors’ home. She didn’t know until years later the full extent of the danger, long after Dawson was convicted and received a life sentence. Devillers “was good at putting bad guys behind bars,” Bednarek said.
‘A working prosecutor’
While Devillers said he’s proud of his work and the work of other career prosecutors and staff in Franklin County and at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he’s never been fully satisfied. Sure, it’s nice to receive letters from people in neighborhoods where gangs like the Short North Posse or the Trevitt and Atcheson Crips based their criminal activities, until he and other prosecutors pursued criminal cases and prison sentences against them.
“It doesn’t last long, because two days later there’s a murder and you’re dealing with a different neighborhood,” he said.
It’s that perpetual pursuit that helped propel Devillers into his role as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio in November 2019. He knew it could be a short stint as the top prosecutor over 48 Ohio counties, including the cities of Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton. But after nearly 20 years in the office, working as an assistant U.S. attorney, he wanted a chance to lead. He’s been praised as an innovator for his work and the way, throughout his career, he helped bring together local, state and federal law enforcement efforts. “He’s not a bureaucrat,” said Kevin Kelley, a longtime assistant U.S. attorney who’s worked alongside Devillers. “He’s a working prosecutor.”
There were big-name corruption cases during Devillers’ time as U.S. Attorney, most recently racketeering charges filed against former Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four other men in what prosecutors have called the largest bribery scandal in state history. Separately, several Cincinnati City Council members were arrested and indicted on bribery and other counts. In November, former Councilwoman Tamaya Dennard was sentenced to 18 months in prison for accepting $15,000 in bribe money. While such cases are in the public spotlight, Devillers used his time as U.S. attorney to focus on combating violent crimes and drug trafficking, including targeting the illegal sale and exchange of firearms and the flow of drug money to foreign cartels. “The two biggest problems in the Southern District of Ohio are violence and fentanyl,” he said.
The efforts over the past 12-14 months, he said, have been fruitful.
“This is going to be a busy, busy office, both on the corruption angle and the violent crimes and cartels,” he said. “You’re going to see a bunch of murder (cases) and extraditions here this year – a lot, in all three cities.”
Sen. Brown: Devillers ‘Pursuing justice and holding those in power accountable’
With Devillers’ departure, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Vipal J. Patel has been named acting U.S. attorney, pending the Biden administration’s nomination and the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of an appointed replacement.
The vetting process involves extensive questionnaires, financial disclosures and interviews; the commission will recommend leading candidates to Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-ohio, who will then recommend a candidate to the president. The process likely will take weeks.
“U.S. Attorney Devillers built on the good work done by his predecessors, pursuing justice and holding those in power accountable,” Brown said in a statement. “I’m confident the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio will do the same, and I look forward to working with our nonpartisan panel of experts to find the most qualified person for the job.”
As for his career, Devillers plans to join a local law firm, where he’ll focus on white collar crimes. (He’s technically not allowed to work for the federal government for the next five years and cannot say which law firm until he is no longer with the U.S. Attorney’s office.)
Devillers said he’s reached out to local officials, hoping to be involved as a citizen in efforts to combat drugs and violence. He’s taking this week off, though. He might read a book or go hiking with his wife at a state park. And he’ll probably at some point be thinking about crime.
“I really don’t know what the hell I’m going to do,” he said. “… All I’ve ever been is a prosecutor.” mkovac@dispatch.com @Ohiocapitalblog