A 500-million-year-old fossil from Canada’s may be the earliest known relative of the squid.
Nectocaris pteryx was thought to be either an arthropod or a chordate, but its strange body meant no one could be sure. Now 91 specimens from a new quarry reveal the creature had a lot in common with cephalopods, including well-developed eyes with an internal lens, a funnel-shaped nozzle for jet propulsion, and two tentacles with bumps that could be primordial suckers (Nature, ).
“This combination really points to cephalopods,” says at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, who…
