X-rays show that this ancient vampire squid had a strange appendage that it used to hunt.
The contemporary vampire squid is a mysterious creature. It lives a sluggish existence deep in the water, far from the shore, where it feeds on whatever dead organisms float past it on their way to the ocean floor.
Was life always like this? This is a difficult subject to answer for species such as squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish, as these organisms (coleoids, evolutionary cousins) are identified by what they lack: a hard shell. This means they lack bodily parts that predispose them to fossilization. Conditions must be ideal for the soft body of a coleoid to be preserved as a fossil.
This is why Thursday's publication of new research in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports is so significant. Paleontologist Alison Rowe and her team analyzed rare fossilized remains of an extin...