Fossils roughly 160 million years old found in the US state of Wyoming have prompted paleontologists to rethink ancient cephalopods: the squid relative discovered there had a barrel-shaped body and reached record sizes for its group, infohub.kz reports.
According to ScienceDaily, an international team of researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, including Dean Lomax of the University of Manchester, has described a new species of extinct belemnites. The prehistoric animal was named Wyoteuthis linsterorum. The fossils were found in the Sundance geological formation in Wyoming, and the findings were published in the journal "Papers in Palaeontology".
Most belemnites had a narrow, bullet-shaped internal skeleton 1–2 centimeters wide. In the new species, the internal rostrum reached 10 centimeters in length and a record 6 centimeters in width. The living mollusk measured about 60 centimeters in total length, including its tentacles.
Computed tomography showed that the animal belonged to the ancient family Megateuthididae, which scientists had previously believed to have died out long before that point in the Jurassic period.
Belemnite specialist Alexei Ippolitov of Victoria University of Wellington suggested that the large size helped Wyoteuthis linsterorum hunt smaller relatives of the genus Pachyteuthis.
The description of the new species was prompted by two rare specimens: the first was found by Burkhard Pohl in the late 1990s, and the second by collector Cliff Linster near the town of Ten Sleep in 2019. Both fossils are now on display at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in the town of Thermopolis.