evolution of the eight-tentacled cephalopods<\/a>, suggesting they emerged much earlier than previously thought. The next oldest-known octopus fossil is only about 90 million years old.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s a huge gap,\u201d Clements said. \u201cAnd so that big gap got researchers sort of questioning, \u2018Is this thing actually an octopus?\u201d<\/p>\n
To solve the mystery of the \u201cweird blob,\u201d Clements and his team used a synchrotron \u2014 which uses fast-moving electrons to create beams of light brighter than the sun \u2014 to look inside the fossil rock. They found a ribbon of teeth known as a radula that is common to all mollusks, including nautiluses and octopuses. Each row had 11 teeth. Octopuses have either seven or nine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has too many teeth, so it can\u2019t be an octopus,\u201d Clements said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s how we realize that the world\u2019s oldest octopus is actually a fossil nautilus, not an octopus.\u201d<\/p>\n
The teeth matched those of a fossil nautiloid called Paleocadmus pohli that had been found in the same area. Clements said the mistaken identification may have happened because the creature decomposed and lost its telltale shell before it was fossilized, complicating identification.<\/p>\n
As a result of the findings published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Guinness World Records said it will no longer list Pohlsepia mazonensis as the earliest known octopus.<\/p>\n
Managing Editor Adam Millward said the scientists had made \u201ca fascinating discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be resting the original \u2018oldest octopus fossil\u2019 title and look forward to reviewing this new evidence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Pohlsepia mazonensis is named for its discoverer James Pohl, and is in the collection of the Field Museum in Chicago.<\/p>\n
Clements said the museum should not be disappointed by the new evidence, which means it now has \u201cthe oldest soft tissue nautilus in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Field Museum have a small collection of these ancient nautiluses, which I think as a cephalopod worker is probably the best thing ever,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The museum has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 A 300-million-year-old tentacled sea creature has lost its crown as the world\u2019s oldest octopus, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[252462,1147,157,793,5629,252461,92575,2031,79,43822,252283,965,1529],"class_list":{"0":"post-573758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-adam-millward","9":"tag-animals","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-illinois","13":"tag-james-l-pohl","14":"tag-octopuses","15":"tag-oddities","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-shellfish","18":"tag-thomas-clements","19":"tag-world-news","20":"tag-zoology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}