Anna Falchi: Political Animals — Joe Biden is a Vampire Squid, Donald Trump is a Blind Amphibian, and Barack Obama is a Prehistoric Lizard

Earliest known ancestor of vampire squid and octopus named after US President Joe Biden

It may have looked like a squid, but Syllipsimopodi bideni was not a squid.

A 328-million-year-old fossil appears to have 10 legs with suckers and remnant of an internal shell
Scientists believe it is the earliest known ancestor of octopuses and vampire squid
They’ve named the fossil in honor of President Joe Biden

It may have looked like a squid, but the beautifully preserved fossil of a creature with 10 arms is the oldest known ancestor of another group of animals that includes octopuses and vampire squid, US scientists say.

“We have soft tissues that are preserved in such good detail that we can actually see individual suction cups on the arms,” said Christopher Whalen of the American Museum of Natural History.

The torpedo-shaped creature with fins on its back swam in the tropical waters that covered North America around 328 million years ago.

Its fossilised body was excavated more than three decades ago and put away on a museum shelf until Dr Whalen and his colleague Neil Landman stumbled upon it.

Dubbed Syllipsimopodi bideni, it has joined the pool of species named in honour of US presidents.

The fossil, described today in the journal Nature Communications, pushes back by 82 million years the time when “vampyropods” evolved.

Squid-like but not a squid

Vampyropods are one of three groups of soft-bodied cephalopods that contain vestiges of internal shells.

The group includes the enigmatic vampire squid — which is neither a blood-sucker nor a squid — and is related to octopuses.

Dr Whalen said the fossil provides insight into the point when vampyropods split away from their squid cousins.

“It’s very interesting showing you the earliest stages of that evolutionary line.”

It had long been thought that ancestral vampyropods had 10 arms like today’s squids and cuttlefish, but this is the first time it has been found in the fossil record.

“That’s never been documented before in vampyropod,” Dr Whalen said.

Along each arm appeared to be suckers.

“This helps confirm that suckers are a very old adaptation,” he said.

Two of the ancient animal’s arms were longer than the other eight, similar to squid and cuttlefish, which use the longer arms as hands to grab food.

“So one possibility is that early on, these things were behaving a lot more like squids.”

It is this feature that inspires the name of the creature’s genus: Syllipsimopodi, which is Greek for “prehensile foot”.

By the beginning of the age of dinosaurs, about 80 million years after S. bideni appeared, vampyropod fossils looked more like today’s vampire squids, which have eight arms and two long filaments.

Eventually, octopuses evolved with just eight arms.

“For whatever reason, those elongated arms were no longer useful, so they were evolutionarily reduced until they were completely lost in modern octopuses,” Dr Whalen said.

But what really sets this animal apart from its squid cousins is what’s happening inside its body.

The ancient animal had a long, triangular-shaped, semi-transparent feature made out of chitin called a gladius.

The gladius, which is named after a Roman sword, is the soft outer remnant of the hard shell found inside species such as cuttlefish.

A name for a president

S. bideni was named in honor of the inauguration of President Joe Biden.

“I submitted my paper fairly soon after his inauguration … and it seemed like a natural way to celebrate that moment,” Dr Whalen said.

“I was particularly encouraged by some of the plans that he put forward to counter climate change.”

The ancient cephalopod is not the first animal species named after recent presidents.

Dermophis donaldtrumpi, with Mr Trump’s hair on its head, was named in a public ballot by an UK environmental company.(Envirobuild)

Donald Trump has Dermophis donaldtrumpi, a blind amphibian from Panama that buries its head in the sand, along with a moth(Neopalpa donaldtrumpi)and a fossil sea urchin (Tetragramma donaldtrumpii).

While Barack Obama has at least nine species named after him including an extinct prehistoric lizard (Obamadon gracilis), a trapdoor spider (Aptostichus barackobamai), a bird (Nystalus obamai), andseveral invertebrates including a blood fluke (Baracktrema obamai) and some fish… More

The lizard, Obamadon (foreground), named after President Barack Obama.(Carl Buell/Yale University)

Political Talk

Meanwhile, get ready to barbeque Vampire Squid, Blind Amphibian, and Prehistoric Lizard because you can no longer afford proper meat,

Inflation rose 7.9% in February,

Asked whether it was planning to attack other countries, Lavrov said: “We are not planning to attack other countries. We didn’t attack Ukraine in the first place”.

Anna Falchi Nude Scenes From “Cemetery Man” Enhanced

The video below features Anna Falchi’s nude sex scenes from the 1994 film “Cemetery Man” remastered and enhanced in high definition.

Anna Falchi’s grandfather Anthony would go on to fund the Wuhan lab research that created the Kung Flu, but clearly their bloodline isn’t all bad as Anna’s tit toppers are of the halal size and shape of a hummus serving bowl and they are also pleasingly dark.

Unfortunately Anna’s milk valves are not coated in a pelt of pubic hair, or she would have boob bags that were on par with our beloved pious Neo Nazi… But perhaps her grandpa Anthony can do something that actually benefits humanity for once in his miserable life by developing a virus that promotes the growth of erotic body hair on women.