All articles tagged with #mazon creek
Using synchrotron imaging, researchers reclassified Pohlsepia mazonensis as a nautiloid relative Paleocadmus pohli, overturning the fossil's status as the oldest octopus and pushing crown octopus divergence to the Jurassic, while highlighting the oldest nautiloid soft-tissue preservation in the Mazon Creek deposits.
Synchrotron imaging of the Mazon Creek fossil Pohlsepia mazonensis revealed hidden teeth matching Paleocadmus pohli, proving it’s a nautiloid relative rather than an octopus. This pushes octopus origins to the Jurassic and marks the oldest nautiloid soft-tissue fossil, overturning a 26-year-old misidentification from Illinois.
A fossil long hailed as the oldest octopus, Pohlsepia mazonensis from Mazon Creek (~311–306 million years ago), has been re-examined with advanced imaging. Using synchrotron X-ray, micro-CT, SEM, and multispectral imaging, researchers found no octopus features (no eight-arm anatomy, no internal shell, no ink sac, no hooks) and no ocular pigments. They identified a preserved radula and dental pattern that match nautiloids, revealing it died, decomposed, and was flattened into mud, preserving soft tissue as two-dimensional stains. This makes Pohlsepia the oldest confirmed nautiloid soft-tissue fossil in the Paleozoic, and the study suggests other Mazon Creek fossils could yield similar revelations.
A 300-million-year-old fossil, Pohlsepia mazonensis from Mazon Creek, which was long interpreted as an oldest-known octopus, has been reclassified as a nautilus after high-resolution X-ray synchrotron imaging revealed a radula and anatomy inconsistent with octopuses, reshaping ideas about cephalopod evolution. The study, led by Dr. Thomas Clements and affiliated with the Field Museum, was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
A Field Museum fossil long thought to be the oldest octopus, Pohlsepia mazonensis from Mazon Creek (about 300 million years old), was re-examined with high-resolution X-ray imaging. The scans revealed a preserved radula indicating it is not an octopus but a nautilus, reshaping conclusions about octopus evolution and suggesting the cephalopod lineage is more recent than previously believed. The soft tissues likely decayed before fossilization, which had previously obscured the animal’s true identity.