Posted on 01/24/2019 11:34:37 AM PST by ETL
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."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
yeah I’m doing Italian tonight!
lol
how old?
Well not 100 million years old!
and you seemed to be going down the wrong interpretation alleyway! :)
Apparently. But there are quite a few animals around today that are pretty much as they were 10s and 100s of millions of years ago. Sharks, roaches....
AOCliguadont translates as “toothy tongue of an AOC,” and refers to the fish’s enormous exposed teeth,
I knew I’d seen one of those slimy creatures recently.
Something, something, evolution because the earth is billions of years old, something.
What??? This many comments, and not one pic of Helen Thomas?
Buon Giorno!
If we continuously evolve, why do some species like this hagfish remain unchanged for hundreds of millions of years? Are they already perfect for their environment? Has it never changed in all that time?
That is one strange fish:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/science/the-hagfish-is-the-slimy-sea-creature-of-you/
That’s the first 100 million year old hagfish I thought of, too!
It must be the apex predator...what a defense mechanism!
And I thought skunks had the perfect defense.
I like pretty much any edible water dwelling critter, so it looks okay as a food item to me-maybe served with a garlic and butter sauce, with a side of steamed greens and kelp-and a nice chardonnay to drink-one from Nancy Pelosi’s winery would be very appropriate-from a hag’s vinyard to be served with a hag...
Similar set of choppers.
There we go! Problem with hagfish? China to the rescue!
The slime goes great with vegetables! (lower left in first pic)
It looks like a lamprey to me.
Wikipedia:
“Hagfish are long and vermiform, and can exude copious quantities of a milky and fibrous slime or mucus from some 100 glands or invaginations running along their flanks.[10] The species Myxine glutinosa was named for this slime. When captured and held, e.g., by the tail, they secrete the microfibrous slime, which expands into up to 20 litres (5¼ US gallons) of sticky, gelatinous material when combined with water.[11] If they remain captured, they can tie themselves in an overhand knot, which works its way from the head to the tail of the animal, scraping off the slime as it goes and freeing them from their captor. This singular behavior may assist them in extricating themselves from the jaws of predatory fish or from the interior of their own “prey”, and the “sliming” might act as a distraction to predators.
Recently, the slime was reported to entrain water in its microfilaments, creating a slow-to-dissipate, viscoelastic substance, rather than a simple gel. It has been proven to impair the function of a predator fish’s gills. In this case, the hagfish’s mucus would clog the predator’s gills, disabling their ability to respire. The predator would release the hagfish to avoid suffocation. Because of the mucus there are few marine predators that target the hagfish. Other predators of hagfish are varieties of birds or mammals.[12]
Free-swimming hagfish also “slime” when agitated, and later clear the mucus utilizing the same travelling-knot behavior.[13][14] The reported gill-clogging effect suggests that the travelling-knot behavior is useful or even necessary to restore the hagfish’s own gill function after “sliming”.
Hagfish slime is under investigation as an alternative to spider silk for use in applications such as body armor.[15]”
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