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8-armed Jurassic ‘vampire’ used supersuckers to trap prey, amazing 3D images reveal | Live Science

A Jurassic vampire squid-like creature used supersuckers to snatch prey out of the water column and lock it in place with a watertight seal, 3D imaging of several fossils reveals.

For the first time, scientists used advanced 3D imaging techniques to examine in great detail the prey-snatching suckers of Vampyronassa rhodanica, an extinct relative of the modern vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis). The analysis revealed never-before-seen features of the animal’s internal anatomy, scientists reported Thursday (June 23) in the journal Scientific Reports (opens in new tab).

“For the first time, we can show that there was a combination of anatomical characters in V. rhodanica not seen today,” first author Alison Rowe, a doctoral student at the Palaeontology Research Center in Paris (CR2P), a lab backed by Sorbonne University, the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, told Live Science in an email.

The three fossils featured in the study were originally excavated from La Voulte-sur-Rhône Lagerstätte, an exceptional fossil site located in the Ardèche region of southeastern France. The site is about 164 million years old, meaning it dates to the middle of the Jurassic period (201.3 million to 145.5 million years ago), and it contains a trove of different fossilized marine organisms.  …