Octopus

Joined
Mar 7, 2009
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542
Here's a fine little octopus from the Lebanese Cretaceous, roughly 5 cm across (armspan). Mouth, ink sack and other internal features are visible, but I can't make out stylets or gladius yet. I'll make some close-up images later.
 

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D, each of the other coleoids in this fauna has a distinctive elongate gladius (e.g. Glyphiteuthis, Rachiteuthis, Boreopeltis, Dorateuthis). The octopods have either a pair of vestigial gladius plates (Keuppia, Palaeoctopus) or a pair of tiny stylets (Styletoctopus). Then there's the shape!

Kevin, in the lower image I've drawn over the photo in powerpoint and set the transparency of the shape to 90%. This is how I made these drawings too.

Capt. and Sk, I also find it very easy to imagine this one alive!

Terri, true, not many of these have been found.

I've just taken a few close-ups (attached). The soft parts show beautifully in UV light, but I haven't worked out how to make a good photo of this yet.
 

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Do you or Kevin take a portable UV when you go hunting (especially Kevin since he camps)? I am assuming the soft body parts "glow" like white using the ultra violet and would think Terri might find something interesting on a night hunt with one.

The shape is what made me wonder (not the arms, they certainly look cephy but oddly uniform, unlike the ones we normally see in the wild that are almost always missing parts). The beak seems to be very wrongly placed for an octopusor am I looking at it incorrectly yet again by assuming the indentation is the beak area.
 
dwhatley;165750 said:
Do you or Kevin take a portable UV when you go hunting (especially Kevin since he camps)? I am assuming the soft body parts "glow" like white using the ultra violet and would think Terri might find something interesting on a night hunt with one.

No, I don't take a UV light with me. Most of the fossils out here are replaced with calcite and most of the matrix is limestone or shale, limestone is mostly calcite and shale has a lot of calcite in it (calcite makes up about 4% of the total weight of the earth), so they would all show up the same color. At home I have seen very few of my fossils show up a bright and/or different color under UV light (unlike all the old '60s posters on my walls :sly:).
 
I could use the UV lamp for watching scorpions at night, but it's not very powerful so I'd have to get quite close. I had some fun with one of the Lebanese quarry owners on the weekend - we took a selection of specimens to a shop selling UV lamps and tried out each lamp in turn. Wonderful to see things appear that couldn't be seen with the naked eye - a juvenile skate (Cyclobatis) was a complete surprise.

That indentation D is the ink sack. Here attached is a very preliminary sketch of the animal (I've just been looking at illustrations of octopus anatomy). There are more fine structures above the area of brown stain and also in the area between the mouth and the mantle.
 

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Very cool Hajar! Your and Kevins' fossils seem so much more fascinating than my old battered things, that I am never sure if I should be posting them or not! :hmm:
 
dwhatley;165764 said:
I had intentionally refrained from mentioning the period of time they were a social must have :old: because Hajar and Terri would not remember.

Actually "D" I am also quite old(not as old as Kevin, at 106:sagrin:) the posters are all gone but I do have an old lava lamp around here somewhere.

The visual of myself out night hunting gave me a good laugh, I am known to be a little clutzy, and am lucky not to have harmed myself during the daylight hours! I could borrow my sons night vision contraption, I would also have to strap my shotgun on somewhere (I have seen coyote tracks in the mud where I'm hunting now) along with various hammers and things attached to my person..:goofysca:funny visual
 
dwhatley;165764 said:
I had intentionally refrained from mentioning the period of time they were a social must have :old: because Hajar and Terri would not remember.

Terri;165778 said:
Actually "D" I am also quite old(not as old as Kevin, at 106:sagrin:) the posters are all gone but I do have an old lava lamp around here somewhere.

:rainbow: Far out!!
 

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