You don’t want to end up in the arms of this ancient squid – which is related to the still living vampire squid.
This type of squid lives at incredible depths, in oxygen-poor water. They mainly eat past floating organic particles. Both the vampire squid and its ancestors are — or were — made up of soft tissue.
Difficult to find as a fossil. Still, researchers got their hands on a few. From ancient relatives, who must have lived about 200 million years ago. They were only 10 centimeters, with 8 arms, an oval-shaped body and two fins.
Using the very latest techniques, they managed to extract new information from the fossils. The pistons in particular – which they already had at the time – were impressively robust and the nerves needed for prey detection were also not bad. Despite the small size of the animal, it was not one that you would have liked to encounter as a fish.
No, take today’s vampire squid, whose name comes from the color of its skin and the cape-like webs between its tentacles. It has completely embraced the languid deep sea underwater life with all eight tentacles.
Read more: It sucked to be the prey of ancient cephalopods.
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