mollusc – Page 2 – Nix Illustration

Cambrian Explosion Month #26: Phylum Mollusca – Tentacle Time

Cephalopods‘ highly distinctive body plan and incredible intelligence make them some of the most charismatic marine animals. Today they’re mainly represented by the soft-bodied coleoids (octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish), with the modern giant squid and colossal squid being the largest living invertebrates. In comparison the shelled nautiluses seem like weird oddballs, but they’re actually far more typical examples of the group than their squishier cousins – as part of the conchiferan lineage the ancestors of all modern cephalopods were also shell-bearing molluscs, and for much of their evolutionary history shelled forms like ammonites and orthoceridans were extremely abundant.

The exact evolutionary relationships of cephalopods within the conchiferan family tree aren’t clear, but their closest relatives might be modern monoplacophorans and they probably descended from limpet-like “monoplacophoran-grade” ancestors in the early Cambrian. The current oldest potential cephalopod fossils come from about 522 million years ago, but the first definite cephalopods in the fossil record come from much later in the period.

Cambrian Explosion Month #25: Phylum Mollusca – Shelling Out

The exact evolutionary relationships of the main groups of modern molluscs are rather debated, with several different proposed family trees. But one of the main possibilities is that there are two major lineages: the aculiferans and the conchiferans.

Modern conchiferans include slugs and snails, cephalopods, bivalves, tusk shells, and monoplacophorans – all groups that ancestrally have either a single-part shell or a two-part bivalved shell, with some lineages later becoming secondarily shell-less.

The ancestral conchiferans are thought to have been monoplacophoran-like molluscs, limpet-like with a cap-shaped shell, and likely diverged from a common ancestor with the aculiferans around the end of the Ediacaran. (But modern monoplacophorans probably aren’t “living fossil” descendants of early Cambrian conchiferans, and may instead be close relatives of cephalopods that have convergently become similar in appearance to their ancestors.)

Some of the earliest conchiferans were the helcionelloids, a lineage of superficially snail-like molluscs with coiled cone-shaped mineralized shells. They appeared in the fossil record at the start of the Cambrian (~540-530 million years ago) and lasted until the early Ordovician (~480 million years ago), and have been found all around the world as components of the “small shelly fauna“.

And while they’re usually tiny, only a couple of millimeters in size, they may actually represent juveniles or larvae – there’s evidence that at least some species grew up into much larger 2cm (0.8″) limpet-like adult forms.

Cambrian Explosion Month #24: Phylum Mollusca – Coats of Mail

Much like Odontogriphus and Wiwaxia, the evolutionary relationships of a group called the halkieriids have been debated for a long time. These animals looked like “slugs in chain mail“, covered in thousands of tiny overlapping mineralized armor plates along with a larger shell plate at each end.

In the past they’ve been assigned to different parts of the lophotrochozoan family tree, sometimes being placed closer to annelids or brachiopods, but at this point they’re generally accepted to be molluscs. The spiny species Orthrozanclus may link halkieriids with wiwaxiids in a larger “halwaxiid” lineage of early molluscs – or they might instead be early members of a group called aculiferans.

Aculiferans are represented in modern times by chitons and aplacophorans, and they’re distinguished from all other molluscs by having either eight shell valves (chitons) or no shell at all and a worm-like body covered with tiny calcareous spines (aplacophorans).

(Also chitons are especially weird, with magnetite teeth and thousands of eyes in their armor plates.)

A related fossil species called Calvapilosa kroegeri from the early Ordovician of Morocco (~480 million years ago) seems to link halkieriids with aculiferans, placing the chain-mail-slugs as a stem lineage close to the common ancestor of modern forms.

Cambrian Explosion Month #23: Phylum Mollusca – The Stem Weirdos

Molluscs are one of the largest animal phylums, second only to the arthropods, and are also hugely diverse, found in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments all over the world. Not only are familiar modern animals like bivalves, slugs and snails, and squid and octopuses included in this huge lineage, but also nautiloids, chitons, tusk shells, monoplacophorans, worm-like aplacophorans, and the extinct ammonites and orthocerids.

Like the annelids they’re lophotrochozoan spiralians, and their exact evolutionary relationships within that group are a bit uncertain. But their fossil history seems to go back at least 558 million years with the “mollusc-like” Ediacaran Kimberella, and the earliest members of most major mollusc lineages had probably already diverged from each other before the start of the Cambrian.

The common ancestor of all molluscs probably had features like an unsegmented body, a muscular foot on their underside, a mantle and mantle cavity, a radula, and possibly a tough but non-mineralized leathery “shell” – and Odontogriphus omalus may represent an early stem lineage retaining that basic body plan into the mid-Cambrian.

Cambrian Explosion Month #01

It’s March, and that means it’s time for Cambrian Explosion Month!

Kulindroplax

Kulindroplax perissokomos, a mollusc from the mid-Silurian of England (~428-423 mya).

About 4cm long (1.6″), it had a wormlike body covered in spicules (tiny spines) which suggests it was a member of the aplacophoran molluscs – but it also had a row of seven larger shells along its back resembling those of chitons.

Modern aplacophorans are all shell-less and were traditionally thought to be a very early branch of the mollusc lineage that retained a “primitive” ancestral body plan. More recently, however, a combination of genetic evidence and fossil discoveries of animals like Kulindroplax have revealed that they’re actually close relatives of the chitons and instead lost their shells much more recently during the course of their evolution.

Almost-Living Fossils Month #16 – Fancy Triangle Clams

Trigonia was a genus of bivalve mollusc that first appeared in the Middle Triassic, around 245 million years ago. Part of a much older lineage (the trigoniidans) that originated over 400 million years ago in the Late Silurian or Early Devonian, and distantly related to modern freshwater mussels, these bivalves have been found in marine deposits all around the world.

Their triangular shells had complex internal hinges, and often featured elaborate patterns of ribs and tubercules (which may have been adaptations to increase burrowing efficiency) that made them very visually distinctive. They lived mainly in shallow coastal environments, and in some places their fossils are so common that they must have been very numerous animals in their ecosystems.

Trigonia costata was a species living in Europe during the Early-to-Middle Jurassic (~174-166 mya), around the time when the trigoniidans were exploding in diversity. Usually around 5-7.5cm in length (2-3″), it was one of the longest-lasting individual species of Trigonia and one of the most common at the time.

Along with their other trigoniidan relatives, various Trigonia species continued to evolve throughout the entire rest of the Mesozoic, and while almost all of them went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous a few did manage to hang on into the Cenozoic.

The last record of an actual Trigonia comes from Argentina at the very end of the Paleocene, about 56 million years ago. After a nearly 200-million-year run, this long-lived genus finally disappeared – but although Trigonia itself was gone, that wasn’t quite the end of the trigoniidans altogether.

A single remaining lineage quietly continued on all the way into modern day, either descended from one of the Trigonia species or very closely related to the genus, living in waters off the coast of Australia and Tasmania. Known as Neotrigonia, they’re not quite as elaborately ornamented as some of their ancient relatives, but their complex shell hinges give them away as the only living trigoniidans – and their anatomy can give us some hints about what Trigonia’s soft tissue parts may have looked like, such as the presence of an unusual boot-shaped muscular foot that helps them burrow rapidly into the seafloor.

Almost-Living Fossils Month #12 – The Other Nautiluses

Nautiloids are represented today by just two living genera (Nautilus and Allonautilus), but they have a lengthy evolutionary history going back almost 500 million years.

The peak of their diversity was during the first half of the Paleozoic, with many different shapes of shells from coiled to straight, then they began to decline when their relatives the ammonites and coleoids appeared and began to compete for similar ecological niches. Although a few groups of nautiloids survived through the end-Permian mass extinction, most of them had disappeared by the end of the Triassic, leaving just one major remaining lineage known as the Nautilina (or Nautilaceae).

During the mid-to-late Jurassic (~165 mya) two new groups split away from the ancestors of the modern nautiluses – the cymatoceratids and the hercoglossids.

Cymatoceratids such as Cymatoceras sakalavum here had shells with a ribbed texture. Living during the Early Cretaceous, about 112-109 million years ago, this particular species is known from Japan and Madagascar and could reach a shell diameter of over 15cm (6″).

Hercoglossids, meanwhile, were much more smooth in appearance, but both groups also had more complex undulating sutures between their internal chambers than modern nautiluses do.

These nautiluses made it through the end-Cretaceous mass extinction and had a brief period of renewed success, filling the ecological roles left vacant by the extinct ammonites. But by the end of the Oligocene (~23 mya) both the cymatoceratids and hercoglossids vanished, possibly unable to deal with cooling oceans and the evolution of new predators.

Some of the hercoglossids’ Cenozoic descendants, the aturiids, managed to last a little longer into the Early Pliocene (~5 mya) before another period of cooling seems to have finished them off. Past that point, all that was left of the once-massive nautiloid lineage were their cousins the nautilids, who gave rise to today’s few living representatives.

(It’s also worth noting that the classification of the cymatoceratids seems to be in flux right now. Some paleontologists currently don’t consider Cymatoceras itself to actually be part of the group, instead being a nautilid much closer related to modern nautiluses. If this is the case then the cymatoceratids may not have actually survived past the Late Cretaceous – but the Cymatoceras genus alone still counts as an “almost-living” fossil since its various species ranged from the Late Jurassic to the Late Oligocene.)

Orthrozanclus

Orthrozanclus elongata, from the mid-Cambrian of China. Only about 2cm long (~0.8″), this tiny creature was covered in both long spines and extensive armor – with tile-like scales on its back, overlapping dagger-shaped plates around its sides, and a small shell on its head.

It’s the second species of Orthrozanclus to be discovered, extending the genus’ range about 10 million years older than the Canadian O. reburrus.

Although it would have been a member of the Lophotrochozoa (the group that contains modern molluscs, annelid worms, and brachiopods), its exact evolutionary relationships are still uncertain. It might have been a transitional form between Wiwaxia and the halkieriids, or it could be closer related to the brachiopods.

Unsolved Paleo Mysteries Month #03 – Ammonite Anatomy

Ammonites (or “ammonoids” in technical terms) are one of the most recognizable types of fossil, found in such high abundance that they’re frequently used to precisely date rock layers. They’re absolutely everywhere in fossil collections, and are even made into jewelry.

So we must already know everything we possibly could about them, right?

Except… we really don’t know what their soft parts looked like.

The fossil record for ammonite soft tissue is surprisingly empty for a group that existed for over 300 million years. A possible ink sac and a few organs have been found, but nothing else.

Based on their other cephalopod relatives, they probably had at least ten arms (the two longer tentacles shown on this Collignoniceras are a little speculative), along with a siphon for propulsion – but until we find that elusive exceptional preservation we just don’t know for sure.

[Edit: As of 2022, a few more traces of soft tissue have been found!]