SHAFAQNA (Shia News Association) —The Austria National History Museum scientists have recreated the appearance of a fossil which they believe to be the ancestor of the modern-day squid and octopus.
The fossil belongs to the spiky creature Dissimilites intermedius and was discovered in sediment formed at the bottom of the ocean during the Cretaceous period.
The ammonite was relocated to the top of the Dolomite Mountains in the Alps, 128 million years later.
Scientists who reconstructed the fossil using 3D scanning technology found that the body was covered with spines each between three and 4mm long, mailonline reported.
“Computer tomography and a complicated 3D reconstruction programme 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,” said a museum spokesman.
The Natural History Museum has displayed the video of the swimming creature for the first time in 128 million years along with photos of the 13cm-long creature.
The creature 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.
Led by Alexander Lukeneder of the museum’s geological/paleontology section, the team discovered the ammonite fossil last year. — www.shafaqna.com
