"We know very little about the relationships between the major groups of molluscs, and the early history of the group," says Smith. "Our study reveals that Nectocaris is similar to known members of the modern cephalopod group, which includes squid, octopus, cuttlefish and the nautilus, as well as common fossils such as ammonites and belemnites, which are now extinct." Due to the ambiguous characteristics evident on that specimen, Nectocaris has remained unclassified until now," says Smith, lead author of the study published in Nature. "Previously, all knowledge of Nectocaris came from a lone specimen described in 1976. The new interpretation became possible with the discovery of 91 new fossils that were collected by the ROM from the famous Burgess Shale site (Yoho National Park) in the UNESCO World Heritage Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, British Columbia over the past three decades, and examined by PhD student Martin Smith along with U of T EEB and Geology assistant professor and ROM palaeontologist Jean-Bernard Caron. "This is significant because it means that primitive cephalopods were around much earlier than we thought, and offers a reinterpretation of the long-held origins of this important group of marine animals." "We think that this extremely rare creature is an early ancestor of squids, octopuses, and other cephalopods," says Martin Smith of U of T's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and the Department of Natural History at the ROM.
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