living fossil – Museum of the Weird

Posted on September 17, 2015 by MOTW Admin

Amazing discovery inside “living fossil”

1024px-Undina_penicillata — 65-million-year-old fossil of a Coelacanth
Photo by Haplochromis [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Researchers studying the Coelacanth, a mysterious living fossil, discover something amazing.

Thought extinct, the deep-ocean-dwelling creature was found alive and well when fishermen caught one in 1938. The bizarre fish has a number of unusual qualities. It has matching pairs of lobe fins that stick out like legs and even move like the legs of a four-legged animal. It has a hinged skull which can widen it’s mouth to eat larger prey. It has an electrosensory organ in it’s snout that may help it hunt.

Now we find that it once had lungs!

Photo of a diver swimming with a Coelacanth — Living fossil swims with a diver
Photo by Mordecai 1998 [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

An article in Discover News tells how researchers exploring the body of a Coelacanth have found what appears to be an obsolete lung. Humans have an appendix, an organ that seems to serve no real purpose for us, but might have been important long ago. Similarly, it appears that this fish may have once used lungs to breath air and that the organ has faded back over time.

This suggests that the Coelacanth was once an air-breather that evolved to become a creature of the deep. This may be what saved this species while other creatures of the period were wiped out, possibly by a single event.

Earth’s history is a strange array of creatures, and discoveries like this just fuel the imagination. Will we ever get a clear picture of it all without a time machine? Perhaps not. However, each clue shows us that it was all weirder than we thought. Weird is good!

Posted on June 23, 2015 by MOTW Admin

Prehistoric Sea Monster Found Alive!

We’re a little early for Shark Week (Who knew this would become a thing?), and we’re past some of the buzz from Jurassic World, so maybe this is the perfect place to mash up the two. On land, most Jurassic creatures—the ones with massive size and sharp knife-like teeth—have become mostly fossils.

The ocean is a different case. Some creatures from the age of dinosaurs still exist down there. Prepare yourself for one of the most bizarre creatures you’ll ever see: the frilled shark.

These creatures are extremely uncommon, which is probably good, because this looks way scarier than a Great White. However, they have been recorded in a variety of locations in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

world map showing blue colored areas to mark sightings — Map of Frilled Shark sightings

For something that’s rare, these are pretty widely spread.

In truth, the frilled shark is not actually a Jurassic creature, but a more modern one that has only been dated back to the early Pleistocene epoch. Its traits are very similar to its older ancestors, giving us a good taste of what it would be like to encounter such a beast.

We love monsters! You can see our life-sized King Kong at the Museum of the Weird on 6th street and visit all of our others in the Sfanthor House of Wax on South Congress. Get a combo pass and see both museums for one great price.

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Guest Blogger

A TRUE “LIVING FOSSIL” EEL/FISH DISCOVERED!

I can’t believe we’re still finding new animals in the water all around the world, wait, yes I can because we’ve only explored 70% of our oceans! I’m sure there are still hundreds if not thousands of new things to discover. Who’s up for an adventure?

Cryptomundo writes:

The Proceedings of Royal Society B, 2011, is noting the discovery of a new species of fish. Their article is published here, and is entitled, “A ‘living fossil’ eel (Anguilliformes: Protoanguillidae, fam. nov.) from an undersea cave in Palau.”