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At present’s mollusks are an extremely various group of animals, says paleobiologist Xiaoya Ma of Yunnan College in China. With dwelling species as totally different as clams and octopuses, it’s powerful to search out widespread traits that point out what the group’s earliest ancestors regarded like. However “fossils can usually present distinctive and direct proof” for the way early mollusks appeared, Ma says.
The fossils, which had been uncovered in China, date to round 510 million years in the past following an early Cambrian interval when there was a speedy burst of evolution for mollusk ancestors (SN: 6/11/94). Ma and colleagues examined a complete of 18 specimens, ranging in dimension roughly from 1 to six centimeters lengthy. Every specimen was “not all the time stunning,” Ma says. Gentle tissues like these in S. aculeata’s physique don’t fossilize effectively. “However they preserved or compressed from totally different angles … [which] helps us put a jigsaw [puzzle] collectively to reconstruct the animal.”
S. aculeata’s base is flat, with a singular foot. This mollusk attribute helps the animals scooch throughout the bottom or dig into delicate sediments. What’s extra, the hole chitin cones that make the organism resemble a durian fruit on the surface are stuffed with slim canals which can be “spectacular and intensely uncommon,” Ma says. These canals are much like these discovered within the exoskeletons of extinct and dwelling worms and brachiopods, suggesting a standard origin.
