Early Cambrian Fossil Uncovers Key Buoyancy Structure at the Dawn of Cephalopod Evolution

Early Cambrian fossil uncovers key buoyancy structure at the dawn of cephalopod evolution

Extant and ancient cephalopods—including octopuses, squids, extinct ammonites, cuttlefish and nautiluses—have all had to solve the problem of buoyancy, whether they have hard external shells or not.

The first known cephalopod was only a millimetre long and lived about 520 million years ago

The locomotion of modern cephalopods, such as squid and cuttlefish, relies on buoyancy control achieved mainly by a specialized structure called a siphuncle. The discovery of fossils of Eoceras — a millimetre-sized cephalopod with a siphuncle — suggests that the group had already emerged in the early Cambrian, around 520 million years ago. Small shelly fossils show that cephalopods with siphuncle structures lived in the early Cambrian period.

Discovery of 520-million-year-old microfossils sheds light on early Cephalopod origin and evolution

A collection of 32 tiny shell fossils unearthed from early Cambrian strata in southern Shaanxi province, dating back approximately 520 million years, may represent the earliest cephalopods ever identified, according to a study published on July 29 in the journal Nature.

Early Cambrian fossil discovery sheds light on early cephalopod origin and

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