Digital model of an ancient mollusk punk ferox and emo swirl, Created from X-ray scans of fossils
Sutton et al. Nature (2025)
Two prehistoric marine mollusk fossils with distinctive spiky 'hairstyles' have been discovered and named. punk and Emotional.
Its strange appearance highlights the ancient diversity of molluscs, which today include creatures such as snails, slugs, clams, and octopuses.
“Some people may have a bit of a soft spot for molluscs. My partner called them loser animals, but they are one of the really important areas of life.” he says. mark sutton At Imperial College London.
He and his colleagues unearthed artifacts dating back 430 million years at a British site known as . herefordshire lagerstedt.
The fossil, from a group of molluscs known as Aculifera, was so delicate that researchers couldn't simply crack open the stone it contained.
Instead, Sutton and his colleagues use X-ray scans to identify structures inside rocks, slice the material thinly and photograph each layer, and combine the images to show what living things might look like. A 3D image was created. Both were earthworm-like animals with long spines about 2 centimeters long.
Sutton said the music-related nickname was originally a pet name. The name stuck and was officially proposed because the spike-laden fossil was reminiscent of the hairstyle of the punk rock movement. punk ferox and emo swirl.
“The spikes are probably primarily for protection,” Sutton said, but it's also possible that the spikes formed because the creatures needed to remove calcium buildup in their bodies while living in the ocean. be. In many cases, he says, such hard protrusions can serve both purposes.
Researchers don't quite understand how punk The specimen was moved, but the specimen emo It is preserved in a folded state, suggesting that it increments like a caterpillar. emo It also had many sturdy downward-pointing spines on its back, which may have acted as ratchets to aid movement, Sutton said.
These spines would have stopped it from sliding backwards in the sediment as it turned, ensuring it moved forward, he says. “This inching has never really been shown in any fossils before,” Sutton said.
“I love the name; it fits these spiky mollusks,” he says. luke parry at Oxford University. “Molluscan fossils that preserve soft tissue like this are extremely rare, so seeing in 3D what these rare and ancient animals looked like is truly spectacular. It’s like a treasure trove, like the Pompeii of insect-eating molluscs.”
He agrees that the spikes were likely primarily for protection, since both species were definitely moving around on the ocean floor rather than burrowing.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
