95M-Year-Old Octopus Fossils Discovered

mmmscience writes "A new study published in Paleontology is a truly terrific find. Not only did a group of European scientists find a fossilized octopus, they found five complete fossils that show all eight legs in great detail, including a ghost of the characteristic suckers. The discovery of the 95-million-year-old specimens was made in Lebanon. 'What is truly astonishing to the scientists is how similar these ancient creatures are to their modern-day counterparts. Dirk Fuchs, lead author on the study stated, "These things are 95 million years old, yet one of the fossils is almost indistinguishable from living species."'"

Comments

Evolution

[VisceralLogic]

Apparently the octopus is the pinnacle of evolution! I for one welcome our new multipodal overlords!

Re:Evolution

[SIR_Taco]

Oh yea?!
Well if their so great...
Just a second I've a knock at the door, well eight knocks to be precise...
Oh, hello, well no I-

Retract the pods! Prepare to jump.

[girlintraining]

These things are 95 million years old, yet one of the fossils is almost indistinguishable from living species.

It doesn't evolve for 95 million years? It could have been a government octopus.

Re:Retract the pods! Prepare to jump.

[sakdoctor]

Which arm of government?

Re:Retract the pods! Prepare to jump.

[Red Flayer]

Who cares which arm?

They're all full of suckers.

Re:Retract the pods! Prepare to jump.

[n3tcat]

And they all hide behind a lot of ink.

Lack of fossils

[Haoie]

Normally for animal life, anything that doesn't either have bones or some kind of shell won't leave a fossil. Nothing to calcify.

They can leave mud impressions though, which a lot of plants also leave.

When the stars are once again right:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh C'thulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

selection pressures

[jollyreaper]

It's funny how some creatures are under such pressures they rapidly develop and others have settled into their niche so well there's been little change, thus the living fossils. It's amazing to think that the ancestors of today's megafauna were little shrew-like nothings back then and were able to progress from that to elephants and rhinos and, hell, human beings while octopi and sharks are just tooling around looking pretty much the same.

I know that there's no intelligent motive behind evolution, it is an impersonal process of optimization for a set of conditions and there's no selection bias for complexity, as we humans would view such things. It seems like the living fossils are stuck in a rut but as far as evolution is concerned, it's not concerned. There's no personified mind involved, nature is not a guiding intelligence, it's just genes playing along according to rules, rules. Still, I can't help feeling octopi's wife is nagging him "For crimminy's sake, just look at you! 95 million years and you're still mucking about on the ocean floor! There's an entire world out there of land dwellers! Those little shrews went and developed opposable thumbs and they're running the place! And just what have you accomplished, Mr. Eight Arms and no Endo-Skeleton? You just float around and let them turn you into seafood. I'm leaving you for squid! He's got backbone for an invertebrate! At least he's capable of taking out some air-breathers every now and then!"

Re:selection pressures

[Abcd1234]

Look, if you want to ridicule the "creationists" and "intelligent design" proponents, just have the balls to come out and say it; don't pussyfoot around, trying to be clever. Or, better yet, just keep your bigotry to yourself.

I know! It's the same thing with those poor, downtrodden flat earthers. Damn scientists and their bigoted "facts" and "scientific method" things. How dare they come out and criticise magical thinking posing as science simply because magic has no, uhh... you know, that stuff... err... evidence! Yeah, that stuff.

Re:selection pressures

[Reality Master 101]

How can anyone know -- short of subjective observations, which are inherently non-scientific, i.e. revelation from such an "evolution-motivating" intelligence -- whether or not there is an intelligent motive behind any such process?

How can we know if pink elephants are molding magic clay behind the scenes and waving their magic snouts over them to give them life? That exactly -- EXACTLY -- as probable as whatever 'intelligent design' you're advocating, whether it be the Egyption Ra controlling the universe, Zeus, or the Abrahamic God.

In other words, no one can be sure what's "really" going on. But what we do know is that evolution can actually be observed, has been observed, and will be observed again (including new species creation). The Christian God or Pink Elephants both have the same amount of observed evidence.

Re:selection pressures

[jollyreaper]

What a remarkably obtuse thing to say. How can anyone know -- short of subjective observations, which are inherently non-scientific, i.e. revelation from such an "evolution-motivating" intelligence -- whether or not there is an intelligent motive behind any such process?

Look, if you want to ridicule the "creationists" and "intelligent design" proponents, just have the balls to come out and say it; don't pussyfoot around, trying to be clever. Or, better yet, just keep your bigotry to yourself.

Please provide a theory explaining the existence of a creator god or gods and the methods used by them in the creation of the earth and the means to prove such a theory and the scientific community will be forever in your debt.

Barring such evidence, we are left with saying "we see no evidence for an external creator, no evidence of a guiding intelligence in evolution; what we can observe can be explained by evolutionary theory and any gaps currently present in our knowledge are avenues for further research." Science looks for the best theory at hand, not the perfect one that explains every little detail since such a perfect theory is hard to come by. We may not know everything there is to know about electro-magnetism but what we do know of it allows us to make computers work which is somewhat better than the view the ancients had of lightning, i.e. thunderbolts thrown by the Zeus.

Science cannot definitively prove something does not exist but it can at least reduce the question to an irrelevance. Consider Russell's Teapot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

But since you think I'm being clever, here's another one: Don't pray in my school and I won't think in your church.

Re:selection pressures

[DMUTPeregrine]

There is no evidence of intelligent motivation for evolution. The burden of proof is on those trying to show that it exists, not the other way around.

Creationism rules

[tsa]

This fossil proves that evolution can never be the way species appear. We have so many animals that haven't evolved at all in millions of years: crocodiles, sharks, turtles, octopusses... I tell you, all these animals have been put on the Earth by the great Spaghetti Monster (hallowed be its name) and have proven worthy of staying. That's why they haven't become extinct.

Land vs. Sea evolution

[Saffaya]

The remark about sharks and octopods not having evolved in millions of years, compared to all the evolutions witnessed on land, make me wonder if it is caused by the oceans being a more stable environment across the eons than land ?

I mean, look at the coelancanth : living fossil. Do we have anything as ancient on solid ground ?
Or is land intrisincally a much more dynamic/chaotic/subject to wild changes ecosystem ?

Re:Land vs. Sea evolution

[Sabz5150]

Well, I would imagine that the general environment above water changes much more and much more drastically than the one below. Things such as Ice Ages and volcanic eruptions aren't going to have a profound effect on a lifeform that lives hundreds of feet (or even several miles) below the surface of the water.

Evolution requires environmental pressure in order to allow changes to be selected. If there isn't much of an environmental pressure outside of being faster than what's trying to eat you or smarter than what you're trying to eat, there won't be much evolution except to these ends.

Phenotype!=genotype

[Taibhsear]

Just because their outward appearance hasn't changed in millions of years doesn't mean they have not evolved. Heat shock proteins, enzymes, internal organs, nerve systems, skin coloration, mating habits, immune cells, surface proteins, antibodies, etc. These are all things that may have changed through evolution that you might not notice by analyzing fossils. To say that these creatures have not evolved over millions of years is rather naive or ignorant.

German spelling and pronunciation . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

is actually really easy and has only two really simple rules:

• Everything is spelled as it is pronounced.
• Everything is pronounced as it is spelled.

How can you beat that? If you can hear it, you can spell it, and if you can spell it you can speak it. I am fluent in German, although it is a foreign language for me. I never make a spelling mistake in German, but in English, my native language, I am error prone.

And folks wonder why they can build such great cars.

And you can build great sentences, with the same word six times in a row:

"Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fleigen, Fliegen fliegen Fliegen nach." (When flies fly behind flies, flies fly after flies)

Re:German spelling and pronunciation . . .

[Plunky]

And you can build great sentences, with the same word six times in a row:

"Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fleigen, Fliegen fliegen Fliegen nach." (When flies fly behind flies, flies fly after flies)

Sure, and you can do that in english too:

Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and and and and and Chips in my 'Fish and Chips' sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

Re:German spelling and pronunciation . . .

[beav007]

You're doing it wrong. It's actually "Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Mushroom Mushroom"

It's dead

[Tubal-Cain]

These things are 95 million years old, yet one of the fossils is almost indistinguishable from living species.

Except, you know, for the fact that one is a rock and the other can only imitate the appearance of a rock.

Re:ok slashdot

[oldhack]

So this cthulhu walks into a bar, right, and...

Hey, anyone remember how this one goes? Damn, this over-22 thing is a drag...