Science Alert: [2] About 200 million years ago, a brutal underwater attack took place in the Atlantic. A squid-like creature, armed with 10 tentacles studded with hooks, swam up to a prehistoric fish. The predator wrapped its long arms around the fish’s head and crushed its skull.
[3] The cephalopod was looking for a quick, delicious bite, but the meal cost the creature its life. Predator and prey died in a deadly embrace, and their interlocked bodies were fossilized under the waves. [4] A new study analysing that fossil, which has been accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, suggests this is the oldest evidence of such a squid attack ever found.
[5] Malcolm Hart, a paleontologist at the University of Plymouth and the study’s lead author, said fossils depicting one animal preying on another are exceedingly rare. [6] “It points to a particularly violent attack, which ultimately appears to have caused the death, and subsequent preservation, of both animals,” he said in a press release.
[7] Although the fossil was originally discovered in the 19th century off the southern coast of the UK, Hart decided to reexamine it after recently seeing it on display in a British museum. He wanted to know precisely what was going on in the ancient rock tableau and when it had happened.
[8] Hart and his colleagues determined that the predator in question was a coleoid, a type of squid ancestor, named Clarkeiteuthis montefiorei. The 16-inch-long (40-centimetre) cephalopod chomped down on an 8-inch-long (20-centimetre) fish called Dorsetichthys bechei.