#cephalopods

#cephalopods

Pohlsepia mazonensis was hailed as the oldest known octopus in the fossil record, dating back to the late Carboniferous period, roughly 311 to 306 million years ago.

Few transformations in the history of life have been as extreme as the embrace of the ocean by seagrass. Like whales and dolphins, modern seagrasses descend from land-dwelling ancestors.

The bodies of the crabs displayed male reproductive structures, while other parts showcased female features, including gonopores, said K.S. Anoop Das.

We think that in this early deuterostome, the median eye contained both ciliary and rhabdomeric cells. As a result, both cellular lineages were incorporated into a single, ancient, cyclopean eye, which later evolved into the vertebrate eyes.

In a recent study published in the zoology journal Crustaceana, scientists working in Silent Valley National Park reported a new variety of the crab that exhibits both male and female traits. Our new crab friends, of the species Vela carli, are freshwater dwellers that hang out in the streams of the Western Ghats in India.

Some deep-sea fish may be able to see light in a different way from most other vertebrates, according to a new study. The fish, found in the Red Sea, have what the scientists behind the new study describe as hybrid photoreceptorslight-sensing cells in the retina that combine elements of two distinct kinds of photoreceptors, cones and rods. In human retinas, cone cells enable us to see in bright environments, detecting color and fine detail,

Recently, two unexpected examples by a wild wolf and a domesticated cow named Veronika attracted global attention and once again opened the door for experts and others to weigh in on the question, "Are these really examples of tooling?" Many people are eager to know more about the nitty-gritty details of tooling, so I am thrilled that Dr. Benjamin Beck, an expert in this area, could answer a few questions about this fascinating behavior.

We've documented sightings of glass squids to better understand the remarkable transformations they undergo from hatchlings to adults. This new observation, captured in ultra high-resolution 4K, allowed us to zoom in on a juvenile likely no bigger than a baby carrot and reveal more details than we have been able to see before.

An elephant's trunk is a marvelous thing, flexible enough to bend and stretch as it forages for food, but also stiff enough to grasp and maneuver even delicate objects like peanuts or a tortilla chip. That's because the trunk is highly sensitive when it comes to sensing touch. Scientists have determined that the whiskers lining the trunk are crucial for that sensitivity thanks to their unique structure, amounting to a kind of innate "material intelligence, according to a new paper published in the journal Science.

Bats are impressive navigators. Like so many mini submarines equipped with sonar, they deftly navigate dark forests and caves by listening for the echoes of their own calls. But how bats can tell which echo to follow while flitting around in a sea of overlapping and competing signals pinging off the myriad surfaces in their environments has been a mysteryuntil now.

Which animals came first? For more than a century, most evidence suggested that sponges, immobile filter-feeders that lack muscles, neurons and other specialized tissues, were the first animal lineages to emerge. Then, in 2008, a genomic study pointed to a head-scratching rival: dazzling, translucent predators called comb jellies, or ctenophores, with nerves, muscles and other sophisticated features. That single study ignited a debate that has raged for nearly 20 years, sparking fierce arguments about how complexity evolved in animals.

Wooden objects carrying the marks of carving and use could be the oldest wooden tools ever found. Researchers dated the artefacts, found in what is now Greece, to 430,000 years ago - and suggest they might have been made by early Neanderthals or their ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis. A separate study describes 480,000-old flint-knapping tools made from antler and elephant bone, from what is now the United Kingdom.

But as he swept his flashlight through the dark waters, something unexpected emerged. Inching through the beam of light, an alien creature crawled across the surface of the sand, resembling an inch-long cluster of ghostly leaves fringed with silvery filigree and capped with a pair of antennae-like stalks. It immediately caught my eye, said Gosliner, Invertebrate Zoology Curator for the California Academy of Sciences. I've been diving there for 30 years and this one immediately struck me as different.