Ancient ‘Vampire’ Cephalopod From 330 Million Years Ago Is a First of Its Kind

An exceptional fossil unearthed in Montana has given us the earliest known ancestor of vampire squids and octopuses. The cephalopod, belonging to the vampyropod or octopodiform superorder, pushes back the age of the group by about 82 million years.   This challenges our understanding that octopuses evolved from a Triassic ancestor. Fascinatingly, it has not eight, … Read more