timelapse of an eastern whitelip snail (Neohelixalbolabris) vigorously consuming shroom
many of the large land snails with the ‘classic’ snail appearance that people see in north america are introduced garden dwelling species, but N. albolabris is a native species that’s most at home deep in moist forests where it feeds mainly on fungi.
New research led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and Yale shows that the oldest ancestors of the group of animals that includes octopuses and vampire squids had not eight but 10 arms. The study, which describes a new species of vampyropod based on a 328-million-year-old fossil that had not been previously described, pushes back the age of the group by nearly 82 million years. The details are published today in the journal Nature Communications.
“This is the first and only known vampyropod to possess 10 functional appendages,” said lead author Christopher Whalen, a postdoctoral researcher in the Museum’s Division of Paleontology and a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Yale’s Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences.
Whalen and coauthor Neil Landman, a curator emeritusin the Museum’s Division of Paleontology, identified the fossil specimen as a completely new genus and species that dates to about 328 million years old, making it the oldest known vampyropod and extending the fossil record of the group by about 82 million years. In the new study, they also describe its 10 arms—all with preserved suckers—corroborating previous scientific arguments that the common ancestor of vampyropods had 10 arms as well.
Overview of neocoleoid interrelationships and divergence time estimates, showing the position of Syllipsimopodi bideni gen. et sp. nov.
TheRainbow Nudibranch(Dendronotus iris) is a terrifying beast of hellish fire and infernal flame that resides on the western coast of North America.
There are red ones, orange ones, pink, purple and white ones, and I guess that’s why they’re called Rainbow Nudibranches. But they all look like they’re on fire!
The flames are really branching cerata that allow this large sea slug to absorb all the oxygen it needs. The very biggest individuals can reach as much as a foot long, but they’re usually about a third of that.
Rainbow Nudibranches feed on the tentacles of tube anemones, which are a bunch of creatures that look like sea anemones but live in a tube.
The Rainbow Nudibranch pounces on them and won’t let go until they’ve bitten off some tentacles, even if they get dragged halfway down the tube!
Sunburst star turban (Astraea heliotropium) for #MolluskMonday! #SciArt from Bibliothèque Conchyliologique, Vol. 2 (1845) by Thomas Martyn, et al. Contributed for digitization by Ernst Mayr Library, Museum of Comparative Zoology, @harvard to #BiodiversityHeritageLibrary. https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12109134 _________________________________________________ #SunburstStarTurban #Shells #Mollusks #Molluscs #Mollusca #New Zealand #StarTrochus #Seashells #BHLib #Biodiversity #NaturalHistory #NatHist #ScientificIllustration #ScientificArt #OpenAccess #Libraries #Archives #SpecialCollections #LibrariesofInstagram #IGLibraries #IG_Libraries #MCZ
Vlyssis Aldrovandi - De reliquis animalibus exanguibus libri quatuor, post mortem eius editi : nempe de mollibvs, crvstaceis, testaceis et zoophytis - 1642 - via Internet Archive
