Paleontologists Are Rocking with These Ancient Mollusks

Two tiny, ancient mollusks dating back more than 430 million years will help us better understand early mollusk evolution. When discovered in the United Kingdom, their striking appearance inspired the appropriate names: Punk and Emo.

“The names Punk and Emo were actually our initial pet names for these ancient mollusks, inspired by some of their unique features and individuality,” explains Mark Sutton, a paleontologist at Imperial College London who led the study. “Punk in particular, with its spiky appearance, clearly resembles a rebellious punk rocker — and we thought Emo complemented it well.”

The planet Earth is home to up to 200,000 mollusks, which fall into two main groups: the conchiferans — snails, clams, and octopuses belong there — and the aculiferans, which regroup “weird, wacky, and spiny things including obscure molluskan worms.” Punk ferox and Emo vorticaudum belong in the latter. Punk’s spikes resemble classic punk hairstyles, while Emo’s downward-pointing spines evoke emo bangs. The 2-cm-long fossilized ancient mollusks were found at Herefordshire Lagerstätte at the England-Wales border in the UK. Since the two mollusks were fragile, they were sliced by hand, and each tiny section was photographed. “We grind away a slice at a time, take a photo, repeat at 20-micron intervals.” While the procedure destroyed the fossils — turned to dust by the end — it also allowed the production of detailed 3D representations of the molluscs.