100-million-year-old Hagfish complete with slime kit discovered

FoxNews.com/Science ^ | Jan 24, 2019 | Mindy Weisberger Senior Writer | LiveScience

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Scientists recently discovered a rare and important hagfish fossil that includes traces of preserved slime dating to 100 million years ago.

Eyeless, jawless hagfish — still around today — are bizarre, eel-like, carrion-eating fishes that lick the flesh off dead animals using their spiky tongue-like structures. But their most well-known feature is the sticky slime that they expel for protection.

And now, scientists know that hagfish slime is robust enough to leave traces in the fossil record, finding remarkable evidence in a fossilized hagfish skeleton excavated in Lebanon. ..."

The fossil dates to the late Cretaceous period (145.5 million to 65 million years ago), and measures 12 inches (31 centimeters) in length. Researchers dubbed it Tethymyxine tapirostrum: Tethymyxine comes from "Tethys" (referencing the Tethys Sea) and the Latinized Greek word "myxnios," which means "slimy fish." Tapirostrom translates as "snout of a tapir," and refers to the fish's elongated nose, the study authors wrote.

Hagfish have been around for about 500 million years, yet there is next to no trace of them as fossils, primarily because their long, sinuous bodies lack hard skeletons, said lead study author Tetsuto Miyashita, a postdoctoral fellow with the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago.

"Basically, it's like a swimming sausage," Miyashita told Live Science. "It's a bag of skin with a lot of muscles in it. They don't have any bones or hard teeth inside them, so it's really difficult for them to get preserved into the fossil record."

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Tethymyxine tapirostrum is a 100-million-year-old, 12-inch-long fish embedded in a slab of Cretaceous period limestone
from Lebanon, and is believed to be the first detailed fossil of a hagfish. Credit: Tetsuto Miyashita, University of Chicago

Detail from a synchrotron scanning (bottom) of the Tethymyxine tapirostrum hagfish fossil (top) revealed traces of
chemical left behind when the soft tissues fossilized, including signs of keratin that indicate a series of slime-producing
glands along the body. Credit: Tetsuto Miyashita, University of Chicago

Hagfish that lived 100 million years ago had the same slime-producing abilities as modern hagfish.

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No One Is Prepared for Hagfish Slime

It expands by 10,000 times in a fraction of a second, it’s 100,000 times softer than Jell-O, and it fends off sharks and Priuses alike

Ed Yong
Jan 23, 2019

At first glance, the hagfish—a sinuous, tubular animal with pink-grey skin and a paddle-shaped tail—looks very much like an eel. Naturalists can tell the two apart because hagfish, unlike other fish, lack backbones (and, also, jaws). For everyone else, there’s an even easier method. “Look at the hand holding the fish,” the marine biologist Andrew Thaler once noted. “Is it completely covered in slime? Then, it’s a hagfish.” ...”

A car is covered in hagfish, and slime, after an accident on Highway 101

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/hagfish-slime/581002/

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[G Larry]

Oh,....was expecting pic of Pelosi......

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[NorthMountain]

Not even the Spanish Inquisition expects hagfish slime!

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[Billthedrill]

There’s a future for those critters at CNN.

[Reily]

when slimers go pro they go hagfish!

[Reily]

Culinary Delight of Hagfish! Hagfish are not often eaten, owing to their repugnant looks and sliminess. However the inshore hagfish, found in the Northwest Pacific,[52] is valued as food in Korea. The hagfish is kept alive and irritated by rattling its container with a stick, prompting it to produce slime in large quantities. This slime is used in a similar manner as egg whites in various forms of cookery in the region.[citation needed] The inshore hagfish, known as kkomjangeo (꼼장어) or meokjango (먹장어) in Korean and nuta-unagi (ぬたうなぎ) in Japanese,

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Thanks.

Is that info from Wikipedia?

[Slyfox]

[null and void]

Tethymyxine AOCliguadont: Tethymyxine comes from "Tethys" (referencing the Tethys Sea) and the Latinized Greek word "myxnios," which means "slimy fish." AOCliguadont translates as "toothy tongue of an AOC," and refers to the fish's enormous exposed teeth, the study authors wrote.

[Salamander]

I’m going to spend the rest of the day unable to delete the concept of “robust slime” from my mind.

[Reily]

yep

I was thinking about a Japanese restaurant tonight. Now I don’t think so!

[wbill]

The hagfish is kept alive and irritated by rattling its container with a stick

"So, Bob, whatcha do for a living?" "Well, I use a stick to irritate hagfish, then harvest their slime."

Ya know, sometimes my current job doesn't look so bad, after all.

[babble-on]

I see what you did there.

Also, this is nightmare fodder that I am not looking forward to encountering again.

[rjsimmon]

So, in other words, this critter hasn’t changed in over 100-million years???

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[colorado tanker]

Slimy ping.