Enter Simoniteuthis michaelyi, a newfound taxon that has captured the attention of researchers worldwide. This remarkable creature, based on a nearly complete pen accompanied by a head-arm complex, is a brilliantly preserved fossil.

What makes Simoniteuthis truly intriguing is its unusual arm crown, boasting only four arm pairs instead of the expected five. This anomaly challenges our understanding of vampyromorph anatomy.

But the surprises don’t end there. Examination of the specimen’s mouth region reveals evidence of predation on two bony fishes. The two animals died in the act of predation, i.e. one had caught the other and had begun to nibble on it, when they possibly sank into hypoxic waters and suffocated.

Unlike its modern descendant, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, Simoniteuthis inhabited shallower waters, reminiscent of Mesozoic vampyromorphs. This divergence in habitat and hunting behavior offers valuable insights into the evolutionary trajectory of these captivating creatures.

Through meticulous analysis of the fossil record, researchers speculate that vampyromorphs began a vertical migration into deeper waters, possibly driven by shifts in feeding behavior, as early as the Oligocene epoch.

Fuchs, Dirk, Robert Weis, and Ben Thuy. “Simoniteuthis, a new vampyromorph coleoid with prey in its arms from the Early Jurassic of Luxembourg.” Swiss Journal of Palaeontology 143.1 (2024): 1-10.

The post Ancient Origins of the Vampire Squid first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Schmidt Ocean has posted new 4K video of a suite of amazing organisms from seamounts of the coast of Chile. I, however, strongly feel the video should have been accompanied by Chilean music. So set the Schmidt video to mute and play this instead or go here to this rather busy remix.

The post Seamounts of the Southeast Pacific first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post A very special PSA from Deep-Sea News first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The goal was to create a tree where the top represented the ocean’s surface and the base representing the abyssal floor. With a series of white, blue, and black ribbon and silver and blue miniature bulb ornaments, we created the effect of attenuated light as you move deeper. We wanted to make sure to include both a remotely operated vehicle on a lighted tether as well as lighted bathysphere. The tree also included a giant squid attacking a shark and whale fall complete with crabs and eels. We also made some tiny experimental wood falls to resemble the real ones we now have deployed all over the Gulf of Mexico.

You can print all of these decorations yourself. The complete collection can be found in my Thingiverse collection and include:

• The research vessel on top is the ICE – the icebreaker by vandragon_de (with the addition of little printed A-frame for the aft deck.
• The basic and blocky (or to sound like a sophisticated maker low-poly) remote operated vehicle was designed by us.
• Giant Squid by TheGreenFilament
• Shark! Sliced to Print by MacGyver
• Starfish model by Empiricus
• The Voyage of the Bathysphere by themindseye
• LOW POLY CRAB by RaffoSan (for whale fall)
• Eel by Benc (for whale fall)
• Whale by YahooJAPAN (whale for whale fall)
• Giant Deep-sea Isopod by the one and only Andrew_Thaler. (The model is actually based on a real specimen in our lab.)
• Puffer Fish (of awesomeness) by Dinoman (garland)
• A simple log by Montravont
• Vampire Squid by sinryan
• Hammerhead Shark by pmoews

The post 3-D Printing the Ulitmate Deep-Sea Christmas Tree first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Despite the name, however, Vampire Squids are not really squids. They are more closely evolutionarily allied with octopods, but they aren’t really octopods either. Vampire Squids are evolutionary all alone residing in thier own long branch of the tree of life.

If we look at this phylogeny from Lindgreen and coauthors from 2012 based on multiple genes.

And zoom in at the upper part of the tree

Let’s zoom in a little more

You can clearly see that Vampyroteuthis infernalis resides on alone on its own evolutionary branch. It shares its last common ancestor with the octopods but this a distant relative at best. Many think the Vampire Squid may be”phylogenetic relict” the last surviving member of order cephalopods long ago extinct.

One truly is the loneliest number. While you reflect on this evolutionary and ecological isolation of the Vampire Squid enjoy these videos from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

The post The Lonely Existence of Vampire Squids first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, three quarters of a mile deep, lies the peak of an underwater mountain.  Rising 1.4 miles off the abyssal plains, Davidson Seamount, nearly 26 miles long and 8 miles wide, is one of the largest known seamounts in U.S. waters. Davidson contains an abundance of life including massive groves of large bubblegum corals and reefs of glass sponges.  Life is so abundant at the seamount, we proposed nearly a decade ago that Davidson Seamount with its dense aggregations of invertebrates may serve as source of many species to nearby canyons and rocky outcrops off the California coast.  Davidson may be a perfect habitat for many species allowing their populations to explode.  This Davidson Seamount cradle then may serve as source of migrating individuals into other less perfect habitats nearby.  This idea of Davidson as a biodiversity source was instrumental in getting Davidson added to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) in 2009.

A recent expedition by NOAA, MBNMS, and Nautilus, returned to Davidson Seamount.  And is typical of Davidson delivered with a spectacular display of life.   Over 1,000 individuals of the small sized octopus Muusoctopus robustus were caught on video hugging the rocks in a brooding position.  It is unclear why these octopuses are using the seamount as a nursery.  Higher currents around seamounts may bring more oxygenated waters.  The dense aggregations of other animals may provide abundant prey.  The crevasse, cracks, and rocky rubble of this old volcano may provide shelter from predators.

The post An Octopus Nursery Discovered on a Deep Underwater Mountain first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Giant squid are the sea’s best monsters, tentacles down. For evidence we need look no further than the logo of this very website. But did you know that our beloved Architeuthis descends from a venerable line of sea monsters—that Archy’s ancestors, in fact, may have been the first animals ever to merit the name “monster”?

The phrase “prehistoric sea monster” might summon to mind an ichthyosaur or megalodon, but these are johnny-come-latelies to the underwater scene. Megalodon showed up a mere 23 million years ago. Ichthyosaurs evolved closer to 250 million years ago, which may seem pretty old (okay, it is) until you consider the age of the first cephalopod: 450 million years.

I’ll admit that initially cephalopods were no monsters. Snail-like, they lived inside shells that measured a few centimeters at most. But these shells contained a remarkable evolutionary innovation: sealed-off chambers that could be drained of fluid and filled with buoyant gas.

This buoyancy freed cephalopods from the constraints of their heavy shells, allowing them to reach stupendous sizes. No matter how big the shell grew, its weight was automatically offset by more gas-filled chambers.

Endoceras giganteum, for example, grew up to 3.5 meters, longer than a basketball hoop is tall. It was the biggest animal the world had yet seen. I feel confident calling this 450-million-year-old beast one of the planet’s first monsters.

But how did we get from Endoceras to Architeuthis? Is one a direct ancestor of the other, or are they distant cousins n-times-removed? And what became of that fantastic shell?

We need a family tree for Endoceras, Architeuthis, and everything in between—in other words, a cephalopod phylogeny. For over a century, scientists have been working to reconstruct such a phylogeny with evidence from fossils, embryos, DNA and more. I made an attempt to synthesize the most recent work into a single drawing, with lots of advice from paleontologists and the helping hand of an artist who polished my messy sketchwork (and put in those friendly eyes).

Endoceras was one of the Orthocerida, which you can find down in the Ordovician, in the lower right. Today’s giant squid take pride of place—with their smaller siblings—top and center. As for the rest…

From Cambrian through Silurian times, cephalopods all wore their shells on the outside of their bodies, just like every other self-respecting mollusk. The nautiloids continued that decorous habit to the present day. Another externally-shelled group, the ammonoids, explored every bizarre baroque extreme of shell coiling and ornamentation before getting mass-extincted alongside the dinosaurs.

What remains are the coleoids—the only group of cephalopods in which evolution sheathed the shell, burying hard structure inside a soft body.

At first, this internal shell was still massive and still full of buoyant chambers, as in the early coleoid Hematites. But over time natural selection (carried out by hungry fish, for the most part) favored smaller, simpler shells.

Now, cuttlefish and ram’s horn squid are the only modern coleoids to retain the hard calcium and buoyant chambers of their ancestors. The internal shells of octopuses have evolved into mere vestiges.

And squid? Well, the shell remnant of a squid has no chambers and no calcium. But it runs the full length of the body, from head to fin-tip, and it offers support to the powerful muscles that carry these modern monsters through the sea. Though unarmored, Architeuthis is most likely faster and far more agile than Endoceras could ever have dreamed of being.

So which one would you rather meet in a dark alley?

The post How the Squid Lost Its Shell first appeared on Deep Sea News.

If dolphins weren’t such a$$holes, they would gently cradle the octopus like a kitten, stroking its mantle and respecting the cephalopod’s amazing intellect. But who are we kidding! This is a dolphin we’re talking about, and marine mammal researchers have found that dolphins “shake and toss” cephalopods like a dog tearing apart his favorite chew toy:

Why is this dolphin such an a$$hole to the octopus? Probably because cephalopods are yummy but dangerous food – they’re smart and sucker-y, and dolphins run the risk of *suffocation* if the octopus isn’t fully torn apart and incapacitated before meal time. As Sprogis et al. (2017) found, death by octopus tentacle is surprisingly common:

It is apparent that octopus handling is a risky behavior, as within our study area a known adult male stranded and a necropsy confirmed the cause of death was from suffocation from a large 2.1 kg octopus.1 The dolphin had attempted to swallow the octopus, however, the octopus was found almost intact, with the head and the mantle of the octopus in the dolphin’s stomach and the 1.3 m long arms separated from the head and extending out of its mouth.1 Similarly, another T. aduncus [dolphin] died from suspected asphyxiation due to an octopus lodged in its mouth and pharynx approximately 140 km north of our study area (Shoalwater Bay Islands Marine Park).2 In these two cases, the dolphins may not have processed the octopus sufficiently by shaking and tossing it to ensure the arm’s reflex withdrawal responses were inactive. Octopus arms have a defensive response, as their receptors can detect stimuli that cause damage to their tissues (Hague et al. 2013). These receptors allow octopus arms to continue reacting even after the arms have been detached from the head, allowing the arms to coordinate a reflex withdrawal response (Hague et al. 2013). Dolphins must therefore process the octopus sufficiently to reduce the arms reflex withdrawal response and limit their suckers adhering to them, which otherwise would make them difficult to swallow.

So mad props to all the octopuses out there, for fighting the good fight against dolphins (and sometimes winning!)

Here’s the frame-by-frame photo in all its glory (Figure 1 from the below paper):

Reference:

Sprogis KR, Raudino HC, Hocking D, Bejder L (2017) Complex prey handling of octopus by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus), Marine Mammal Science, doi: 10.1111/mms.12405

The post Reason 5,879 why dolphins are a$$holes: Octopus “handling” first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post Look at These Amazing Deep-Sea Creatures from the Remote Pacific Right Now first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The 18 species of Histioteuthid squids, the biggest no larger than a football, are often strawberry colored, with dark photophores resembling black seeds adding to the sweet fruit-like appearance.   All the species live in the mesopelagic, that region in the ocean between 200 and 1000 meters that goes from dimly lit to a full on dark habitat.  Light comes from above in the form of attenuated sunlight and below in the form of bioluminescence.  Given the drastic changes in light with depth, the mesopelagic is filled with a cornea-copia of truly amazing, dare I say monstrous, visual adaptations.  The Histioteuthid squids are no expectation.  The left eye can be twice the diameter of the right eye, a trait only acquired with adulthood.  The left eye can gain such proportions it actually pushes the head out of alignment with the squid’s body in some species.

New work by Kate Thomas and colleagues reveals why these strawberry squid’s different eyes have made such a spectacle of themselves.  The group found that the squids oriented the enlarged left eye upward and the smaller right eye slightly downward.   The squids often held a slanted angle with their body so the eye looking upward was near 45˚ and the downward near 120˚.  Given the field of view of the eyes, the large eye would receive light from directly above to 90˚ horizontal on the left side.  The small eye from 43-198˚ or from directly below to horizontally on the right side.

To keep these eyes aimed in the right area, the strawberry squids also demonstrate a peculiar behavior.  Squids would ratchet themselves, turning the body while the head maintain the same orientation.  The head would, at a precise stopping point, suddenly snap around to match the body orientation. “This may allow histioteuthids to compensate for the unbalanced fields of view created by [different sized] eyes and rapidly change which direction each eye is facing, or to scan their environment.”

But why two different eyes?  Thomas explains, “Eyes are metabolically expensive to grow, maintain, and use, so while larger eyes can improve both sensitivity and resolution, selection probably favors an eye just large enough to perform a necessary visual task but no larger.”  It is actually cheaper, in the total calories needed sense, to have the eyes perform to unique functions and allow one of them to be itty bitty.

And with that, my friends, eye take my leave.

The post The Little Strawberry Squid with the Big Eye first appeared on Deep Sea News.