Scientists have have discovered a pair of 430 million-year-old mollusc fossils in southern Britain, dating back to a time when most of the region was covered by the sea.
The ancient specimens, which scientists named Punk and Emo, were found in Herefordshire, in a breakthrough that the research team says challenges beliefs about early molluscs.
The creatures, which date back to the Silurian period and come from a group known as Aculifera, have been brought to life using 3D modelling to produce striking images of how they would have appeared.
Dr David Siveter, a palaeontologist at the University of Leicester who was part of the international team the 430 million-year-old fossils “demonstrate the crucial importance of so-called ‘exceptional preservation’, in which soft parts of the animal are fossilised, to the interpretation of the evolution of life, in this case shedding new light on the early history of one of the fundamental branches of the evolutionary tree of a major group of life on Earth, the molluscs”.
The findings of the team’s analysis, which has been published in the journal Nature, showed that both Punk and Emo had smooth undersides, which they said indicated they had lived on the seabed, as per BBC News.
Dr Mark Sutton of Imperial College London, who led the research said: “The names Punk and Emo were actually our initial pet names for these ancient molluscs, inspired by some of their unique features and individuality.
“Punk in particular, with its spiky appearance, clearly resembles a rebellious punk rocker and we thought Emo complemented it well.”
“Early Aculiferan molluscs are much less well-known than some of their relatives.
“We have limited information about this group, and for a very long time, we assumed they were rather basic, simple and primitive.
“Retrieving fossils that are so exceptionally well preserved and reveal details of the soft tissues is extremely rare.
“We have been able to create virtual fossils – 3D digital models – providing us with a gold mine of information and helping us understand that the branch of molluscan evolution containing Emo and Punk was much more evolutionarily rich and diverse than we thought.”
Present-day molluscs come in a wide variety of forms, including snails and clams, as well as highly intelligent groups like octopuses and squids.
According to the University of Oxford website, this diversity of molluscs “evolved very rapidly a long time ago, during an event known as the Cambrian Explosion, when all the major groups of animals were rapidly diversifying”.
“This rapid period of evolutionary change means that few fossils have been left behind that chronicle the early evolution of molluscs,” it explains.
