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Long-Lost, Priceless Fossil Turns Out to Be a 30-Million-Year-Old Vampire Squid - ScienceAlert
Feb 21, 2021 1 min, 8 secs
Vampire squid have been lurking in the dark corners of the ocean for 30 million years, a new analysis of a long-lost fossil finds. .

Few fossil ancestors of today's vampire squid survive, though, so scientists aren't sure when these elusive cephalopods evolved the ability to live with little oxygen. .

The new fossil analysis helps to fill a 120-million-year gap in vampire squid evolution, revealing that the ancestors of modern-day vampire squid already lived in the deep oceans during the Oligocene, 23 million to 34 million years ago.

The fossil was originally discovered in 1942 by Hungarian paleontologist Miklós Kretzoi, who identified it as a squid dating back around 30 million years and named it Necroteuthis hungarica.

By looking at rock layers above where the fossil was deposited outside of what is today Budapest, the researchers were also able to show that the squid probably couldn't have survived in the shallower seas of the time.

The new research, published Thursday (Feb 18) in the journal Communications Biology, hints at how vampire squid ancestors learned to live where other squids couldn't.

Looking deeper in the fossil record, the oldest fossils from this group of squid are found in the Jurassic period, between 201 million and 174 million years ago, Košťák said, and they are typically found in anoxic sediments. 

The deep-living squid from 30 million years ago helps link recent history with the deep past, Košťák said

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