Ancient octopus had 10 arms, study finds
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, March 10. An American study found that the ancestors of modern octopuses had 10 arms and lived in the ocean 328 million years ago.
Researchers from the American Museum of Natural History and Yale University analyzed an ancient octopus fossil to reach the above conclusion. The research report was published in the British "Nature Communications" magazine published on the 8th.
According to study author Christopher Whalen, octopuses previously found in fossils have only eight arms, and this is the first time an octopus with 10 arms has been found.
The creature in the fossil is 12 cm long, similar in size to a modern squid, and has 10 arms, two of which are extra long, twice as long as the other arms, and the suction cups on the wrists are clearly visible.
The researchers named the creature Syllipsimopodi bideni, saying it is the oldest known ancestor of octopuses and vampire squid, and a new species of octopus belonging to the order Octopus octopus.
The researchers said in a statement that the fossil study confirmed scientists' previous conjecture that the ghost octopus initially had 10 arms, which gradually evolved to eight.
Research shows that the discovery of this fossil has brought forward the time when researchers previously believed that the ghost octopus appeared by about 82 million years.
According to CNN, the fossil was unearthed in Montana in 1988 and later donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada.
(Yuan Yuan)