Evrim Yazgin
Cosmos science journalist
A pair of 430-million-year-old mollusc fossils have stunned palaeontologists with their spikes which resemble the hairstyles of “emo” and punk musicians.
They’ve named the new fossil species Punk ferox and Emo vorticaudum.
The newly discovered molluscs were found in deposits in Herefordshire in England’s West Midlands. The deposits date to the middle of the Silurian period (443–420 million years ago). This period saw the first vascular plants and arthropods (ancestors of today’s crabs, spiders and insects) colonise land.
Silurian fish also underwent a diversification, including the first jawed fish. This was a crucial step in the evolution of the lineage which eventually became land-dwelling tetrapods: our ancestors.
Although molluscs evolved about 100 million years earlier during the Cambrian explosion, palaeontologists have struggled to piece together their evolution.
Today, Mollusca is second largest animal phylum (behind Arthropoda) in terms of number of species. Scientists estimate the total number of species could be up to 200,000.
There are 2 distinct mollusc groups: Conchifera and Aculifera.
Conchifera includes gastropods, bivalves and cephalopods such as modern squid, cuttlefish, octopuses and snails.
Aculifera is a clade of molluscs that have no shell or conch.
Because of their soft bodies, mollusc evolution is in general characterised by a variety of shapes and forms. But until now, palaeontologists have assumed that Aculifera have been less adventurous with their body plans.
The two new Silurian species show that early Aculifera molluscs were a little more varied than previously thought.
One of the molluscs has been named Punk ferox due to the “fancied resemblance of the spicule array to the spiked hairstyles associated with the punk rock movement”, the researchers write in the Nature paper announcing the discovery of the 2 species.
The other, Emo vorticaudum, was named “after the emo musical genre related to punk rock, whose exponents canonically bear long ‘bangs’ or fringes, of which the scleritome is reminiscent, as well as studded clothing recalling the anterior valves; vorticaudum”.
It’s as if the defiant molluscs are crying out that they’re not so boring after all. I just wonder if it’s a phase. (A personal note from the author: It is not.)
