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nautilus necropsy - not for the faint of heart...

ob;93247 said:
Check for sequestration vs pigmentation, just for fun. The swelling might be secondary, as is true for most animals, most of the time (cytokine mediated immune response or blocking of efferent structures), I would suggest.

OMG, I just realized I have no proper understanding of cephalopods' humoral and cellular immune response, whatsoever :shock:

Yeah, I was struck by the news a few months back about how one of the big results for the sea urchin genome work was that echinoderms and vertebrates share some immune system traits, which made me realize I have no idea how non-deuterostome immune systems differ...
 
Although the circumstances are sad, this is an absolutely fascinating thread. I don't think we've seen a Nautilus removed from it's shell before on this site so these pictures are really welcome, so thank you. Black and white diagrams just don't give any impression of the complexity and size of the living animal in the final chamber.

It really makes one think about the size of the living chamber in the rocky types. Can you see anything in the Hollingworth 'soft-body' ammonite picture that looks analogous to the Nautilus you have dissected? (Thanks for reposting these Kevin).
 

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Erm....I'll give it a shot but I'll probably make an idiot of myself...

Personally I am unconvinced about this fossil - I would of course love to see it in person and my skepticism is probably because its hard to get a really good resolution image of it anywhere. Kind of looks like its filled with sediment to me.

I feel like I'm doing a Rorschach ink blot...

Anyway - here's my not-very-enlightening stab at it. Feel free to correct me if its totally off-base.
 

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On that fossil the clear or translucent portions are filled with calcite, so they were hollow when the calcite formed. The dark areas are probably matrix. Any area that would have had soft tissue would have to be in the clear area, the matrix would have filled in to the soft tissue, lithified, and then the soft tissue or area where the soft tissue was would be replaced with the calcite.
I think you are right in being unconvinced about the fossil, so am I.
That is a very nice reconstruction though, another master of PS among us. :cool2:
 
entirely possible - we're looking into the cause so I'll keep everyone updated. Right now I am totally in the dark though. I originally thought bacterial, then we found heaps of protozoans in the wound, and now fungal seems like a distinct possibility.

Basically we're considering everything. Maybe it was aliens...
 
That's way cool to see the inside of a nautilus like that, and to have everything labeled and stuff helps me understand them a lot more. I always thought that when I am older it would be cool to examine and octopus like this, and do experiments of the like, of course not to be sick, after the octo has died of natural causes. :smile:
 
gjbaroad mentioned a similar condition in his talk at TONMOCON II that involved black "gunk" which is organic, but which doesn't seem to (IIRC) have any pathogens (fungal, bacterial, or otherwise) that have been cultured at all. Unfortunately, the immediate lesson was that a high-calcium diet was tried for them, but didn't seem to help.

Perhaps he can give more details...

That talk also made me acutely aware of how ignorant I am about ceph (and invertebrate in general) immune systems-- I was struck when they announced that the sea urchin genome project had showed that our echinoderm fellow deuterostomes have a surprisingly similar immune system to vertebrates, but the implication is that the protostomes must have a very different one, which I know nothing about... perhaps after a bit of searching, I'll start a thread on the subject over in Phys & Bio, if there isn't one already...
 
Bob the kracken;97045 said:
i know nothing about nautilus anatomy. explain to me why it couldn't be both bacterial and fungal?

There's no reason why it couldn't be both bacterial and fungal! I only suggested fungal because it looks like a condition that our abalone get which has been shown to be fungal! If it was shown to be both then an antibiotic AND an antifungal medication would be required.

J
 

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