"The Ancient Vampire Squid" is a great title for a Sy-Fy Channel movie, or maybe a band, but here it refers to an interesting animal. The vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis), is a little cephalopod that lives in depths of temperate seas, where it basically does nothing except pick up little bits of organic detritus (a.k.a. "marine snow"). It's not an octopus or a squid - it's weird enough to be in its own family (I guess no one invites it to picnics). It does have eight arms with spines and suckers and two tentacles, which have glowing, sticky tips. It can squirt bioluminescent ink. Despite its harmlessness, its "cape" of skin connecting the tentacles and its deep red color got it the coolest scientific name of all time, meaning "vampire squid from hell." Richard Ellis wrote a little e-book about it.
Where did such an oddity come from, in the evolutionary sense? Not surprisingly, fossils of small invertebrates can be rare and fragmentary. However, a new paper examining three good fossils from Jurassic-period France of Vampyronassa rhodanica finds the oldest known ancestor was an active predator, not a passive lurker. More robust suckers on the arms were one clue: marine snow doesn't struggle.
Maybe it's not finding a new dinosaur. But it's still fascinating.
Hat tip to Shannon Bohle for pointing me to this item.
Matt Bille
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