Digital models of ancient molluscs Ferocious punk and I buy a whirlwind generated from X-ray scans of their fossils
Sutton et al. Nature (2025)
Fossils of two prehistoric marine molluscs with distinctive “hairstyles” have been discovered and named. The punk and Emo
Their strange appearance highlights the ancient diversity molluscs – which now includes organisms such as snails, slugs, clams and octopuses.
“Some people might be a little down with the molluscs. My partner called them loser animals. But they are one of the most important aspects of life,” he says Mark Sutton at Imperial College London.
He and his colleagues discovered the 430-million-year-old fossils at a site in the UK. Herefordshire deposit.
The fossils of a group of molluscs known as Aculifera were so delicate that researchers couldn’t open the rock that contained them because that would destroy their fragile forms.
Instead, Sutton and his colleagues used X-ray scanning to detect structures inside the rock and then took thin slices of the material, photographing each layer and then piecing the images together to create a 3D picture of what the organisms looked like. Both were worm-like animals with long spines about 2 centimeters long.
The music-related monikers were originally pet names, Sutton says, because the spiky fossils evoked hairstyles from the punk rock movement, but the names stuck, leading to official suggestions. Ferocious punk and I buy a whirlwind.
“The spikes are probably mostly protective,” Sutton says, although it’s more likely that they formed because the organisms needed to get rid of the calcium that had built up in their bodies as they lived in the sea. Often, such hard protrusions can serve two purposes, he says.
Researchers aren’t sure how The punk move, but the way of a bead Emo it is kept in a folded position, giving the impression that it was crawling a bit like a caterpillar. Emo it also had a strong spine running down the back that could have functioned as a ratchet to aid movement, Sutton says.
Bending those spines would stop them from sliding backwards in the sediment, ensuring that it was moving forward, he says. “This inching has not been shown in any fossils,” says Sutton.
“I really like the names and they will definitely fit the bill for these pesky molluscs,” she says Luke Parry at the University of Oxford. “Fossil molluscs that preserve such soft tissues are incredibly rare, so seeing what these unusual ancient animals looked like in 3D is impressive. This site in Herefordshire looks like a treasure, akin to a mollusc worm Pompeya.
He also thinks it likely that the spikes would have been primarily protective, as both species would certainly have moved on the sea floor rather than burrowing into the bottom.
Topics:
