Ancestor of modern-day squid reconstructed
06/04/2012
Calamari it ain’t.
Employing computer tomography and a complicated 3D reconstruction program, scientists with Austria’s National History Museum have recreated the appearance what they believe to be the ancestor of the modern-day squid and octopus.
Dissimilites intermedius was about five inches long and had a body covered with small spines, according to the Daily Mail.
The fossil was discovered in sediment formed at the bottom of the ocean during the Cretaceous period. The ammonite, part of an extinct group of marine invertebrate animals, was relocated to the top of the Dolomite Mountains in the Alps, 128 million years later.
The museum team used 3D scanning technology to unearth the fossil of Dissimilites intermedius a layer at a time, and then created a video of how the creature lived and moved, according to the Daily Mail.
Scientists who reconstructed the fossil using 3D scanning technology found that the body was covered with spines each between three and 4 millimeters long, or a little less than two-tenths of an inch.
“Computer tomography and a complicated 3D reconstruction program were used to help reconstruct not only the appearance of the fossil found in the Dolomites a year earlier, but also to work out how it moved by the position of the impressions left by its limbs,” a museum spokesman said.
Dissimilites intermedius once swam in the prehistoric Tethys Ocean, which lay between the continents of Gondwana and Laurasiam. Gondwana broke up to form much of the Southern Hemisphere and Laurasia formed much of the Northern Hemisphere, according to PressTV.
The ammonite fossil was discovered last year.
