A 'sea monster' from 500 million years ago: Scientists say this creature had 18 tentacles
A half-a-billion-year-old fossil of a seafloor dwelling creature with 18 tentacles around its mouth may be an ancestor of modern day comb jellies, new research suggests.
The stunning fossil of the deep sea creature was discovered in what is today the Yunnan Province in China, and researchers estimate it lived about 518 million years ago, sitting on the ocean floor.
"When I first saw the fossil, I immediately noticed some features I had seen in comb jellies," Jakob Vinther, one of the study's authors, said in a statement. "You could see these repeated dark stains along each tentacle that resembles how comb jelly combs fossilize. The fossil also preserves rows of cilia, which can be seen because they are huge. Across the Tree of Life, such large ciliary structures are only found in comb jellies."
Named Daihua sanqiong, the fossil of this "sea monster" looks similar to another ancient creatures, researchers say, and they were able to map out how it might have evolved into the comb jelly today, linking it to the unique Dinomischus – a 508 million year old flower-like fossil – and Xianguangia – a fossil thought to be an ancestor of sea anemones.
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"To make a long story short, we were able to reconstruct the whole (early) lineage of comb jellies," by doing anatomical comparisons, Vinther told Live Science.
If the team's findings hold true, it would show how comb jellies are more closely related to jellyfish than previously thought, according to National Geographic.
But the links between the Daihua sanqiong fossil and comb jelly have sparked some questions from other scientists reading the findings.
"This paper strikes me as seeing the webbed feet and bill of a platypus and saying it must be a duck, (despite the fact that) it doesn't fly like a duck, or quack like a duck,” Steven Haddock, a Monterey Bay Aquarium biologist, told National Geographic. "To those familiar with modern comb jellies, the purported correspondence with (these) fossils is equally fanciful."
Vinther told NatGeo that he welcomes the debate and hopes it can help improve understandings of the evolution of these species.
"It's a Pandora’s box, every time we find a new site like this. There's still many gaps, there's still many weird wonders," he told the science magazine.
The study by a team from the University of Bristol, Yunnan University and London's Natural History Museum was published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology. The fossil was found as part of a larger discovery of many more previously undiscovered species, which researchers announced in the peer-reviewed journal Science last week, too.
Follow USA TODAY's Ryan Miller on Twitter @RyanW_Miller
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A 'sea monster' from 500 million years ago: Scientists say this creature had 18 tentacles
