{"id":19242,"date":"2022-03-10T08:44:59","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T08:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=19242"},"modified":"2022-08-18T11:12:16","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T10:12:16","slug":"discovery-fossil-revolutionises-structure-vampyropoda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/discovery-fossil-revolutionises-structure-vampyropoda\/19242\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovery of fossil revolutionises structure of Vampyropoda"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cThis is the first and only known Vampyropod to possess 10 functional appendages,\u201d explained lead author Christopher Whalen, a postdoctoral researcher in the Museum\u2019s Division of Palaeontology, and a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Yale\u2019s Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences.<\/p>\n
Vampyropods are soft-bodied cephalopods that are typically characterised by eight arms and an internalised chitinous shell or fin supports. Because they lack hard structures, Vampyropoda are not well represented in the fossil record.<\/p>\n
This new study is based on an exceptionally well-preserved Vampyropod fossil from the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), which was originally discovered in what is now Montana and was donated to ROM in 1988.<\/p>\n
Whalen and co-author Neil Landman, curator\u00a0<\/em>in the Museum\u2019s Division of Palaeontology, identified the fossil specimen as a completely new genus and species that dated to about 328 million years old, thus making it the oldest known Vampyropod, and extending the fossil record of the group by about 82 million years.<\/p>\n Additionally, they also describe its 10 arms\u2014all with preserved suckers\u2014corroborating previous scientific arguments that the common ancestor of Vampyropods also had 10 arms.<\/p>\n