Tag: cephalopods
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Mazon Monday #317: Pohlsepia Revisited — Not an Octopus After All
A new paper “Synchrotron data reveal nautiloid characters inPohlsepia mazonensis, refuting a Palaeozoic origin for octobrachians” in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences refutes the classification of Pohlsepia mazonensis as an octopus and reclassifies it as a soft-bodied nautiloid with the new name Paleocadmus pohli.
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2026 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show – Preview #7: Paleoctopus newbolti from Lebanon
This is the preview post #7 for the 2026 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Live Auction. The ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show for 2026 will be held on March 21th and 22nd at the DuPage Fairgrounds in Wheaton, IL, which is the same location as last year. All details can be found here. We…
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Video for ESCONI November 2025 Paleontology Study Group Meeting – “Gonioceras: A Most Unusual Cephalopod”
The November 2025 Paleontology Study Group Meeting was held on November 15th, 2025 via Zoom. John Catalani presented “Gonioceras: A Most Unusual Cephalopod”. The diversity of nautiloid shell shapes in the Upper Ordovician of central Laurentia is remarkable. However, one shape is often missing from lists of shell shapes and that is the so-called “flat-fish”…
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ESCONI November 2025 Paleontology Study Group Meeting – November 15th, 2025 at 7:30 PM via Zoom – “Gonioceras: A Most Unusual Cephalopod”
The November 2025 Paleontology Study Group Meeting will be held on November 15th, 2025 at 7:30 PM via Zoom. John Cataloni will be presenting “Gonioceras: A Most Unusual Cephalopod”. The diversity of nautiloid shell shapes in the Upper Ordovician of central Laurentia is remarkable. However, one shape is often missing from lists of shell shapes…
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ESCONI September 2025 Paleontology Meeting – “Show and Tell”
There were some very interesting things on display at the September 2025 Paleontology Meeting. The theme of the night was “Show and Tell”. We had over 20 attendees with everything from Mazon Creek to crinoids to nautiloids to a large model of a Velociraptor. John Catalani, Paleontology Study Group chairman, gave us a preview of…
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Fossil Reveals Ancient Seafloor Communities
An artist’s reconstruction of the tube-like animals attached to the dead phragmocone..Credit…Franz Anthony The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about some very old ocean floor communities. Research published recently in the journal Communications Biology looked at a 480-million-year-old cephalopod from Morocco that was posthumously converted into a condominium. It’s the earliest known…
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PBS Eons: Nautiloids Thrived For 500 Million Years Until These Guys Showed Up
PBS Eons has a new episode. Nautiloids were once much more common, then something happened to threaten their existence. Around 30 million years ago, a new group of predators began to push nautiloids from their former global range into a single remaining refuge. But who were these predators?
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Fossil Friday #66: Galena Cephalopods
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #66. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! ESCONI Paleontology Study Leader John Cataloni sent…
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PBS Eons: Where Are All The Squid Fossils?
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about squids and discusses taphonomy and what happened to their missing fossils. Check out Otherwords, a new show about language & linguistics! https://youtu.be/d2UccTPnl4w It might surprise you but cephalopods have a pretty good fossil record, with one major exception. If squids were swimming around in…
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Phys.org: Cephalopods: Older than previously thought?
Phys.org has a piece on the discovery of some very old cephalopods. Found in Newfoundland, Canada on the Avalon Peninsula, the animals date to about 522 million years ago during the middle Cambrian. If really a cephalopod, these fossils would push their origin back about 30 million years from what is currently thought. Details can…
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Trilobite Tuesday #30: How to hunt for fossils in Ohio
Here’s a page that lists some places to find fossils in Ohio. I’m not sure the trilobite on the page is correct… looks like an Elrathia kingii. The one above is from Ohio and is a Flexicalymene. But, the page has a nice list of places to go and what you can find. Trilobites are…
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Happy Cephalopod Week 2019!
The last week in June is Cephalopod week! Wow, who knew?!? Check out these links to learn more about these fascinating animals!
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Nope, octopuses probably didn’t come from outer space!
ZME Science has a great post about the online controversy about the Octopus genome. Cephalopods are not aliens and the author Mihai Andrei does a great job explaining why. The new study, penned by over 30 researchers, essentially rehashes the theory of panspermia — the idea that life on Earth emerged in outer space, hitching…
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Paleontology Study Group This Saturday – 11/16
ESCONI Paleontology Meeting 7:30 p.m. College of Dupage, – Tech Ed Building (TEC), Room 1038B (Map) Silurian Cephalopods by John Catalani. A silent auction with fossils from the Dick Ade Collection will be held.
