A fearsome 'vampire' predator that lurked in Earth's oceans more than 160 million years ago probably did actually suck its prey, at least in a sense.
Vampyronassa rhodanica
, related to modern vampire squids , reveals the presence of muscular suckers that the beastie likely used for snaring and manipulating prey.This is in direct contrast to the animal's present relatives,, whose suckers seem largely non-functional, and which collect drifting flakes of organic material using sticky cells on a pair of specialized, thread-like appendages.
"The contrast in trophic niches between the two taxa is consistent with the hypothesis that these forms diversified in continental shelf environments prior to the appearance of adaptations in the Oligocene leading to their modern deep-sea mode of life,"Mushy animals like cephalopods are pretty scarce in the fossil record. Soft tissues don't fossilize as readily or well as bones, which makes fossils, especially good fossils, very rare.V.
fossils from a lagerstätte dating back to over 160 million years ago in La Voulte-sur-Rhône in France. This is a type of very fine sedimentary fossil bed that is exceptionally good at preserving fossils, including soft tissue.V. rhodanica , Rowe and her team took the fossils to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France to undergo non-invasive 3D imaging."The fossils are on small slabs, which are very difficult to scan,""On top of that, soft tissues are preserved but we needed phase contrast imaging to visualize the faint density variation in the data.
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