About 180 million years ago, an eight-armed predator seized its prey under the water – another eight-armed beast – and began raiding it, until a catastrophe occurred and they both died of suffocation, a study has found new.
The researchers conducted the study, which was published online March 16 in the Swiss Journal of Palaeontology. Examination of the slab reveals that their last moments together ended in an “eternal capture,” the team said.
“We assume that the predator was so pleased with the capture that he did not realize he was sinking,” said first study author Christian Klug, curator at the University of Zurich Palaeontological Museum and senior professor at his Palaeontological Institute. “He may have woken up in the oxygen-Drink water, suffocated, it died and was rooted in the soft mud. “
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Amateur collector Dieter Weber found the slab holding the records in a quarry left in front of a golf club in Ohmden, a metropolitan area in southern Germany. The fossil creatures on the slab were positioned with the predator’s arms closed around the smallest prey, he found. After preparing the fossil, Weber sold the piece to one of the researchers, who then donated it to the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart.
When these creatures lived early Jurassic Time, the area was a sea basin that extended over much of Central Europe, and “the low-lying waters were often poor in oxygen,” Klug told Live Science in an email.
Both of these ancient creatures are members of Octobrachia, a group of eight-armed cephalopods that includes the octopus, an argonaut (a deep-sea sheltered octopus also known as the paper nautilus) and a vampire squirrel – an animal that got its eerie name from the skin like a cape that ties its arms, but is not a bloodbath or gibearnach. In particular, both of the Jurassic beasts are vampyromorphs, old allies of the modern vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis), Said Klug.
“The vampyromorphs have eight extra arms – as we also show here – a pair of filaments, resembling thick spaghetti cooked for a little too long,” Klug told Live Science in an email . “These filaments are actually used to capture prey.”
Today, vampire squirrels eat detritus, plankton and other small prey. However, as this sample shows, “obviously, the largest species [of vampyromorph] very predatory, “said Klug. After analyzing the sample, the researchers concluded that the octobrachian may be larger, 18-inches (47 cm) long. Jeletzkyteuthis coriacea. The octobrachian appears to be smaller Parabelopeltis flexuosa, which is about 6.5 inches (16.7 cm) long, less than 40% of the length of the predator’s attempt to eat.
The sample is evidence that early vampyromorphs “followed diverse feeding strategies,” but had not yet been adapted to deal with low-oxygen zones in the water, as their relatives today wrote, researchers in the study. Today’s vampire squirrel can feed slowly in low-oxygen areas using the reversible filaments, the team said.
However, the area with low oxygenation seems to be the reason why the two Jurassic sea creatures were so precious.
“The availability of oxygen may have increased the likelihood of the smallest cephalopod remaining in the arm. [region], for he was also immovable by those [low-oxygen] conditions, “Klug said.” Also, the low oxygen conditions kept scavengers away, allowing this unlikely fossil to be preserved. “
First published on Living Science.