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330 million-year-old creature found fossilized in limestone may be the oldest known relative of octopuses, according to a study published in Nature Communications on Tuesday (March 8). The remarkably well-preserved, 10-legged creature died in a tropical bay located in what is now Fergus County, Montana. The scientists decided to name it Syllipsimopodi bideni after US President Joe Biden.
According to The New York Times, the fossil was originally donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada in 1988. But it sat in undisturbed in a drawer for decades until Christopher Whalen, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, pulled it out, inspected it, and noticed its preserved arms were covered in tiny suckers.
“It’s very rare to find soft tissue fossils, except in a few places,” Mike Vecchione, a zoologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History who was not involved in the ...
