(Image: Peter Ward)
ALMOST 30 years had passed since the last sighting of Allonautilus scrobiculatus when this creature swam in front of Peter Ward鈥檚 camera last month, deep below the sea off Papua New Guinea.
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Nautiluses, distant relatives of squid and cuttlefish, are sometimes called 鈥渓iving fossils鈥� because they appear almost unchanged from 500-million-year-old preserved specimens.
Ward, who is a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and his colleague Bruce Saunders first described A. scrobiculatus in 1984. Its shell shape looks unwieldy compared with the more streamlined shells of other animals in the Nautilidae family, but it appears to have evolved that way relatively recently. 鈥淚t turned on its head what we thought of as primitive,鈥� says Ward.
(Image: Peter Ward)
Finding them is an immense challenge. To get this snap, Ward鈥檚 team used specialised cameras that were lowered down 200 metres along with fish or chicken meat as bait. A. scrobiculatus can only survive within a narrow depth range, and may only exist in a handful of locations. Four of the creatures had radio transmitters attached to them so Ward鈥檚 team could track them (see below).
Now some fear that its habitat might be under threat 鈥� ironically, by a company that bears its name. Nautilus Minerals, based in Toronto, Canada, has been granted a permit by the Papua New Guinea government to begin mining deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the area. NGOs and environmental groups are
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淟iving fossil re-emerges鈥�
