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Getting back to the example of the octopus, we have no way of knowing whether the earlier version of octopus could change color at will, spurt ink, or figure out how to get food out of a bottle with a cork in the top.

Ink sacs have been known to fossilize for a long time. This one was a commercial sale ; a whole batch reported from Charmouth ...

But yeah - there's a lot to an organism that doesn't fossilise. I'm just watching the BBC wildlife unit's film of orcas playing rugby with a seal. Incredible behaviour, negligible fossilisation potential.

Oh, I didn't know that : "But the ink of modern squids paralyzes the organs of smell."You learn something every day. Well, I do. Every day that I'm not actually dead.

When I read the summary my first thought was "it could be a fake".

-:sigma.SB

Why is the parent modded down? There is a long history of fake fossils coming out of China. The posting is, perhaps, a bit terse, but hardly a troll.

Is it just me or does anyone else find that there's an unusually large number of unique fossils coming from China? Maybe it's because, like products manufactured for Walmart, they're mostly cheap crap http://www.paleodirect.com/fakechinesefossils1.htm

You can find some examples of fossil forgeries at http://www.paleodirect.com/fakechinesefossils1.htm

Like the 40-foot Pterodactyl for instance?

Granted, it's no longer out and about, but assuming the paleontologists aren't way off base, the remains of those creatures do say something about the scalability of wing flapping.

For Christ's sake, computers are mostly used as tools. And who keeps their old tools around for so long? Only neanderthals:...