Against the odds ancient octopus fossils discovered

March 17, 11:03 AMScience News ExaminerMeg Marquardt

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One of the amazing fossils.  Courtesy Dirk Fuchs

Octopods (or octopi) have been making waves in the news lately.  From the frisky female who flooded an aquarium in California to the recent video of one squeezing itself through an inch-wide hole, there seems to be a surge of interest in the creatures.  And it's no wonder, really, as they are among the most uniquely fascinating animals on the planet.  Wickedly smart with a one-of-a-kind body shape, scientists are striving to discover just how these animals have become so intelligent.

That is no easy task, though.  Because octopods lack a rigid skeleton structure, there are very few fossils to shed light on their evolution.  In fact, "the chances of an octopus corpse surviving long enough to be fossilized are so small that prior to this discovery only a single fossil species was known, and from fewer specimens than octopuses have legs." [EurekAlert]

So the new study published in a recent copy of Palaeontology is a truly terrific find.  Not only did a group of European scientists find a fossilized octopus, they found five complete fossils that show all eight legs in great detail, including a ghost of the characteristic suckers.  The discovery of the 95-million-year-old specimens was made in Lebanon, where the "extraordinary soft-part preservation in the Lebanon limestones" [original paper] managed to save the entire impression of the ancient octopods.  They consist of three new species, and there was even traces of of the octopods' ink found as well.

The fossil next to a schematic drawing.  Larger version. Courtesy Dirk Fuchs.

 What is truly astonishing to the scientists is how similar these ancient creatures are to their modern-day counterparts.  Dirk Fuchs, lead author on the study stated, "These things are 95 million years old, yet one of the fossils is almost indistinguishable from living species." [EurekAlert]   The fossils provide an extraordinary glimpse into the evolutionary history of the creatures, pushing back the birth of the modern octopus millions of years.

The fact that these fossils exist is a small miracle of science and a big victory for paleontologists and evolutionist alike.