An article published in the “Swiss Journal of Palaeontology” reports the identification of a new species of so-called vampire squid that lived about 183 million years ago, in the Lower Jurassic period, and was named Simoniteuthis michaelyi. Robert Weis, Ben Thuy, and Dirk Fuchs examined a fossil attributed to the order of the vampyromorphs (Vampyromorpha or Vampyromorphida) found at an excavation site in Bascharage, Luxembourg, in 2022. This is a single specimen that died while it was feeding on two small fish and is very well preserved, to the point that even the soft tissues fossilized.
The image (Courtesy Fuchs, D., Weis, R. & Thuy, B. / Swiss J Palaeontol 143, 6 (2024)) shows some views of the Simoniteuthis michaelyi’s fossil, some of which are close-ups (C, D, F), some with exposure to ultraviolet light (D and G) and a drawing of the fossil (B).
Today, the only existing vampiromorphs are those of the Vampyroteuthis infernalis species but many extinct species have been identified over the years. These cephalopod mollusks are commonly called vampire squid but are actually more closely related to octopuses, from which they differ in various ways, most obviously in the webbing of skin that connects its eight tentacles.
Vampyroteuthis infernalis lives at great depths but the new species discovered lived in shallow waters in what is now the heart of Europe and in the Jurassic was partly covered by water with a few islands here and there. Various fossil deposits in Luxembourg have been known for a long time and in this case, the fossil was discovered near the town of Bascharage.
According to researchers who studied the vampire squid they named Simoniteuthis michaelyi, its excellent preservation is due to unique conditions that existed when the specimen died. The waters at the bottom of the sea into which it ventured contained little oxygen and this prevented it from being devoured before being buried intact in the seabed. This allowed a fossilization process to affect the soft tissues as well, with the consequence that the specimen remained intact to this day.
According to the researchers’ reconstruction, the Simoniteuthis michaelyi specimen was hunting fish but, after catching two that gotfossilized together with it, it sank too far towards the seabed. That was an area where, due to low oxygen, this vampire squid suffocated. In the past, fossils of two vampire squids that died in what were believed to be similar circumstances while fighting each other were found and described in an article published in March 2021, also in the journal “Swiss Journal of Palaeontology”.
The discovery of such an exceptionally preserved specimen provides new information on vampiromorphs. Existing fossils already led to a complex classification within this taxonomic order but their state of conservation doesn’t always allow to precisely understand the various relationships. For this reason, the researchers expressed doubts about the attribution of Simoniteuthis michaelyi to a family of vampiromorphs proposing the families Loligosepiidae and Geopeltidae. It’s a common problem in the field of paleontology that in many cases requires new fossil discoveries for a solution.
