{"id":234791,"date":"2026-04-07T22:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T03:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/oldest-octopus-fossil-is-no-octopus-at-all-scans-reveal"},"modified":"2026-04-07T22:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T03:34:14","slug":"oldest-octopus-fossil-is-no-octopus-at-all-scans-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/oldest-octopus-fossil-is-no-octopus-at-all-scans-reveal","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Oldest octopus\u2019 fossil is no octopus at all, scans reveal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/oldest-octopus-fossil-is-no-octopus-at-all-scans-reveal2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A famous 300-million-year-old fossil that was thought to be the world\u2019s oldest octopus\u2014even featuring in the Guinness Book of Records\u2014has turned out to be something else altogether. In what amounts to a case of mistaken identity, the fossil hid its true nature through decay 300 million years ago, before being fossilized.<\/p>\n<p>Using the latest <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2022-08-uncovering-3d-images-fossils.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">synchrotron imaging<\/a> to search inside the fossil rock, researchers discovered tiny teeth preserved inside the rock that prove that Pohlsepia mazonensis is not an octopus at all, but an animal related to a modern Nautilus\u2014a multi-tentacled animal with an external shell.<\/p>\n<p>This revelation, revealed in the journal <i>Proceedings of the Royal Society B<\/i>, solves a long-running puzzle in the understanding of octopus evolution that has confused scientists for decades. It also provides evidence of the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-05-marine-fossil-south-africa-kind.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">oldest nautiloid soft tissue<\/a> preservation known in the fossil record and means that the record-holding \u201coldest octopus\u201d should be quietly written out of the Guinness Book of Records.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A famous 300-million-year-old fossil that was thought to be the world\u2019s oldest octopus\u2014even featuring in the Guinness Book of Records\u2014has turned out to be something else altogether. In what amounts to a case of mistaken identity, the fossil hid its true nature through decay 300 million years ago, before being fossilized. Using the latest synchrotron [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}