The 'alien goldfish' might just be an early mollusk.
Ancient creatures nicknamed"alien goldfish" had toothy, tongue-like structures in their guts that they fired out of their bodies to catch prey 330 million years ago, but they weren't so different from some modern-day mollusks in that regard, a new study finds.
Many mollusks have a similar inverted tongue-like structure called a radula, which carnivorous and herbivorous members of the group use to grab food. The researchers, therefore, suspected that the mysterious T. wellsi was an early mollusk. "Nobody seriously believed that they were extraterrestrial goldfish, but they certainly looked extremely strange," Conway Morris said. Along with the toothy gut tongue, T. wellsi had a soft body that measured up to 3.5 inches long, with a prominent fin at the back to propel them forward.
The researchers proposed in the new study that T. wellsi was an early gastropod, which is the group of mollusks that includes modern snails and slugs, because many of these living species extend their foreguts to grasp prey."It's the discovery of this radula-like structure, which we suggest is the really crucial piece of evidence," Conway Morris said.
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