430 Million Year Old Sea Cucumber That Looks Like ‘Cthulhu’ Discovered in UK

Researchers Discovered The Fossils Of The Sea Cucumber In 430 Million Year Old Rocks

430 MILLION YEAR OLD – The fossil found in 430 million-year-old rocks was named “Sollasina Cthulhu” due to its resemblance to the fictional character ‘Cthulhu” and could represent a new species of sea cucumbers.

A team of paleontologists recreated the model of the remains in a 3D reconstruction. Observed, the remains revealed an important circulatory system that was not seen before in this group of animals.

430 Million Year Old
Photo tby Elissa Martin | Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History

The researchers claim that, despite the newly discovered creature looks like a kind of sea urchin, it’s actually belongs to a group of echinoderms called “ophiocistioids” which are already declared extinct.

Ophiocistioids are seen by the researchers as an ancient relative of sea cucumbers. Sea cucumbers are echinoderms under the class ‘Holothuroidea’.

They are elongated underwater animals with leather-like skin.

Lead author of the study, Imran Rahman from University of Oxford, said this in a conversation with Newsweek:
“In terms of its morphological characteristics, Sollasina cthulhu was characterized by the presence of 45 tentacle-like tube feet, a body composed of many hard plates, and a mouth surrounded by five large ‘teeth.’ “

This is according to an article from MSN News. The nodule carrying the fossil was retrieved in early 2000s and the virtual model representation was produced in late 2016 according to Imran.

Because the fossil was well-preserved, Scientists were able to recreate a model of its anatomy accurately. Imran said, this allowed them to observe the fossil and recognize it “…as a species new to science.”

They reportedly created the 3D structure using a process called ‘serial grinding’.

“This involved painstakingly grinding away the fossil, a few hundredths of a millimeter as a time, taking photographs of each exposed surface with a digital camera. This allowed us to build up a dataset of hundreds of ‘slices’ through the fossil, which were then digitally reconstructed as a ‘virtual fossil’ on a computer.” Imran said describing the process.

The “Sollasina Cthulhu” is indeed one of the many great discoveries at Herefordshire fossil site.

That is all there is to it, we’ll post updates as soon as we got them.

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