On the Avalon Peninsula, a team of German scholars has found fossils of a cephalopod mollusk dating back to about 522 million years ago.
A new discovery made in Canada could rewrite the history of cephalopods, a class of molluscs from which the octopuses, cuttlefish and squid that live today in our seas descend. In Avalon peninsula, a team of German scholars has found fossils dating back to about 522 million years ago, 30 million years earlier than what was so far considered the oldest fossil, renamed Plectronoceras cambria. According to experts, in fact, the fossils found previously belonged to the late Cambrian.
"If they were actually cephalopods, we would have to backdate the origin of the cephalopods to the beginning of the Cambrian period" explained Dr Anne Hildenbrand of theHeidelberg University, who conducted the research together with researcher Gregor Austermann "This would mean that cephalopods emerged at the very beginning of the evolution of multicellular organisms during the Cambrian explosion."
The cephalopod fossils discovered in Canada are really tiny: one measures 1,4 centimeters in height. But that was to be expected according to experts. The ancient creature found had a cone-shaped shell that was divided into various chambers, connected by the muscular tube called siphon. And according to experts, it would be a distant relative of the nautilus.
@Communications Biology
"This discovery is extraordinary," announced Gregor Austermann. “It has long been suspected in scientific circles that the evolution of these highly developed organisms began much earlier than previously thought. But there was a lack of fossil evidence to support this theory ”.
And the very fossils found on the Avalon Peninsula would be the proof that scholars have long awaited and that will reveal new interesting details about these extraordinary creatures that populated the Oceans millions of years ago.
Source: University of Heidelberg / Communications Biology
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