“It’s the very same dimension, the very same age, the very same locality, the very same proportions and it’s simply preserved slightly bit in another way,” Dr. Klug stated.
The brand new paper depends closely on visible strategies of research, and these questions could possibly be resolved with chemical analyses, stated Dr. Clements, who was not concerned with the analysis. “With a full suite of methods, we might positively have extra clues or much more solutions,” he stated noting that these methods might be costly.
When Dr. Whalen first examined the fossil, he seemed for the phragmocone, a chambered shell attribute of most fossil cephalopods that helps them management buoyancy. A nautilus’s phragmocone is it coiled shell; a cuttlefish’s is its cuttlebone. The fossilized chambers of a phragmocone are divided by mineralized sheets, that are very distinctive and customarily well-preserved, Dr. Whalen stated.
The fossil of G. beargulchensis, which is held on the American Museum of Pure Historical past, preserves these distinct sheets, Dr. Whalen stated. As a result of that fossil and S. bideni have been preserved on the similar website and in the identical setting, each ought to have preserved traces, the authors argue. However S. bideni had no hint of those traces, suggesting the creature by no means had an inside chambered shell.
Dr. Whalen additionally anticipated to see proof of a primordial rostrum, a mineralized counterweight to make sure early cephalopods might swim horizontally. However the fossil of S. bideni had no rostrum, suggesting “it was by no means there to start with,” Dr. Whalen stated.
As a substitute, the researchers’ evaluation discovered that S. bideni’s inside shell is a gladius, a triangular shell-like remnant present in squids and vampire squids. “It’s actually not one thing that anybody anticipated to see in an animal this previous,” Dr. Whalen stated. “We knew we have been taking a look at an early vampyropod.”
Dr. Klug disputed this conclusion, suggesting the shell is as an alternative a deformed phragmocone and physique chamber of G. beargulchensis, the recognized cephalopod.