Buildings, streets, and even ice cream flavors were named Joe Biden in honor of the President of the United States (US). Now, there is one more name added to the list, there is Joe Biden as an ancient sea animal with ten tentacles.
Syllipsimopodi bideni, the creature's name, is thought to have lived about 328 million years ago. This soft-bodied creature appeared in the ocean much faster than previously thought. The findings of Syllipsimopodi bideni push back the fossil record of vampyropods, a group of cephalopods that contains the vampire octopus and squid, which lived nearly 82 million years ago.
Based on the findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, the fossil also suggests that the ancestor of cephalopods may have originally had ten limbs, before developing into the modern eight-legged octopus and squid.
"This is the first and only vampyropod known to have ten functional appendages," said study author Christopher Whalen, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York.
"So this fossil is arguably the first confirmation of the idea that all cephalopods ancestrally had ten arms."
The creature had a body about five inches long, similar to that of a modern squid. The difference is that instead of having eight arms and two tentacles, all the limbs of S. bideni are arms, because they have suckers along their arms. Two of its arms appear to be longer than the other eight, and scientists have also found the remains of its ink sac.
The ancient octopus was found in Montana, which sank underwater hundreds of millions of years ago. The fossil was originally donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada in 1988 but was kept in storage until Whalen reexamined the specimen. As he did so, Whalen suddenly found ten tentacles filled with suckers.
"The completeness of this specimen gives us some evolutionary ideas because we don't know much about many of these groups. It will help fill in some of the knowledge gaps we previously had to conclude," said Zoë Hughes, curator of invertebrate fossils at AMNH.
Finding intact vampyropod fossils can be challenging because hard tissue is relatively easy to preserve, while soft tissue is prone to damage.
"Sufficiently specific circumstances were required for this soft tissue to be preserved, which is why these fossils are quite rare," Hughes said.
The research team behind the work named the species in honor of US President Joe Biden because they were encouraged by Biden's plans to tackle climate change and fund scientific research.