Phys.org has a story about an amazing ammonite fossil. The 165 million year old fossil has revealed never-before-seen soft body detail in an ammonite. It was found about 20 years ago in Gloucestershire, UK. Researchers at Cardiff University and Imperial College London, who published their study in the journal Geology, found evidence of muscles and organs by using 3D imaging.
The findings add insight into how ammonites lived and are evidence that coleoids, the sub-group of animals containing squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish, might be evolutionarily closer to ammonites than previously thought.
Study co-author Dr. Alan Spencer, from Imperial's Department of Earth Science and Engineering and the Natural History Museum, said: "This ammonite is remarkably well preserved, which is very rare. New imaging techniques allowed us to visualize the internal soft parts of ammonites that have so far resisted all our previous efforts to describe them. This is a major breakthrough in ammonite palaeobiology."
Backlit shell with visible organs (to the left). Credit: Cherns et al.
